Tag: literature

  • Posh audiobook brought out by the Casa Radio Publishers in Bucharest

    Posh audiobook brought out by the Casa Radio Publishers in Bucharest

    An audiobook made of a printed book and a CD, Dance, has enjoyed a tremendous success. It includes poems read by Nina Cassian and was re issued by the Casa Radio, Radio House Publishers. The recently-released edition is a substantially updated edition, including poems read by the author and an interview on Nina Cassian’s work and immigration. The interview was conducted by Radio Romania journalist Emil Buruiana.

    The new audiobook was compiled and released in an anniversary context, since in 2024 we marked 100 years since Nina Cassian’s birthday. Basically, it includes 51 poems Nina Cassian recorded with Radio Romania, between 1959 and 2003. Literary critic Cosmin Ciotlos wrote the foreword, while the author of the illustrations is Tudor Jebeleanu.

    An essayist, a translator, a composer and visual artist, Nina Cassian hails from a family of Jewish origin. When she was a teenager, she began frequenting leftist intellectual circles. At the aged of 16 she joined the Communist Youth organization, then an illegal entity. Young Nina Cassian dreamt of absolving the world of all its fundamental antagonisms between sexes, races, peoples, classes.

    Her editorial debut occurred in 1947, with a surrealist volume of poems, Scale 1/1. However, in the wake of an ideological attack then the newspaper Scanteia The Spark launched against her, Nina Cassian gradually begam to write avowedly proletarian poetry. After an eight-year-long roundabout, in her own words, Nina Cassian returned to authentic poetry and started writing literature for children as well.

    As a translator, she created remarkable Romanian versions of works by Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Iannis Ritsos and Paul Celan.

    A superb poem for children “The Tale of Two Tiger Cubs, named Ninigra and Aligru”, earned Nina Cassian the Romanian writers’ Union Prize in 1969. In 1985 Nina Cassian was a guest professor in the United States’ New York University. When she was there, Nina found out about the arrest and murder in prison of dissident Gheorghe Ursu, a close friend of hers.

    In his diary, confiscated by then the Securitate the name of Nina Cassian was mentioned, and so were her political opinions, blatantly anti-Ceausescu. Nina stayed in the United States while her apartment in Romania was confiscated and her books banned from publication and retired from libraries until the collapse of the Ceausescu regime.

    In the United States, Nina Cassian published translations of her poetry written in Romanian (”Life Sentence”), as well as poems she wrote in English (”Take My Word for It!”, ”Blue Apple” şi ”Lady of Miracles”), for which she scooped New York Library’s Silver Lion Prize in 1994.

    Nina Cassian spent the last 30 years of her life in New York. There she wrote her memoirs, which she described as a major project of her age and life, a mirror of the stolen and given years. Entitled Memory as Dowry the three volumes were brought out in Romania over 2003 and 2005.

    Attending the launch event staged by the Casa Radio Publishers were the curator of the recent edition of the Audiobook entitled Dance, literary critic Cosmin Ciotloş, filmmaker Alexandru Solomon and writer Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu.

    Cosmin Ciotloș spoke about the longevity of Nina Cassian’s poetry.

    ” What I was mainly interested in was how much of Nina Cassian today’s Romanian poetry has preserved. And when I say today’s I have a broader timespan in mind. It struck me that, for instance, many of the puns in Florin Iaru’s poetry are legitimately, beautifully, graciously indebted to Nina Cassian’s poetry. Mircea Cartarescu’s poems in the volumes A Night at the Opera or The Levant, dedicated to Ion Barbu, do not go straight to Ion Barbu but they pass through Nina Cassian’s filter.

    On the other hand, it struck me that the very young poets of today to an appreciable extent resonate with Nina Cassian’s poetry. They are a bunch of youngsters I have totally placed my stakes on because they can shake a little bit the way too troubled and way too visceral waters of my generation of poets whom I otherwise hold most dear, but towards whom in no way can I perform an exercise in worship. I mainly have in mind those who publish on the platform known as The Sonnets’ Mafia, the very young Ioan Coroamă, Florentin Popa or Mihnea Bâlici, they are youngsters on whom, again, I have totally placed my stakes.

    That being said, our response to what Nina Casian left behind her as something important in poetry should be far from a mere indiscriminate admiration. It is a poetry that needs to be filtered rationally, it needs to be properly documented, and, at the endpoint of this documentation, apart from the ethical stance we can judge, more or less, we shall soon find out we have interacted with a vivid stylistic formula. A stylistic formula which is still productive, and we do not owe that to Nina Cassian’s longevity, but to the longevity of Nina Cassian’s wit. “

    A Canadian resident since the late 1980s, writer Călin Andrei Mihăilescu met Nina Cassian first in 2 Mai, the Romanian Black Sea resort where she used to spend her summers, and then in New York, decades later.

    ”This is an audiobook, so you can hear Nina’s voice recorded on the radio between the late 1950s and the early 2000. And I can say Nina Cassian’s voice is very high, were we to place her in a pantheon of the great Romanian voices. Hers was an educated voice. It was an extremely clever voice, at one refine and erotic. I got to know better Nina in New York in the last 20 years of her life. There was a time when I went there once a month doing creative writing workshops, alternatively, in Romanian and din English, or in both languages in one single session.

    I was doing those workshops together with Nina, who had a bottle of crap whiskey yet it usually was one a one-liter bottle and who was capable of making anyone drink their heads off. Obviously, she smoked more than I do and, believe you me, I really am a smoker. Nina was a diva. A diva living in an apartment, in a relatively crappy block of flats in Roosevelt Island, an island located on East River, where Nina resisted the temptation the jump off, not following the example of Paul Celan or Gherasim Luca, who took their own lives throwing themselves off into the Seine.

    Everything was damp in that area, save for her apartment, crammed with magazines, you could find vey many issues of the Literary Gazette and Literary Romania. The famous Paris Match issue of 1968 could also be found there, with an article of General de Gaulle’s visit to Bucharest.”

    Filmmaker Alexandru Solomon’s reminiscing Nina Cassian was also extremely emotional. During the launch event Alexandru Solomon also had a short film screened, a film he had made when he was a teenager. Captured in the shots taken in Vama Veche, there were Nina Cassian and his mother, painter and art history teacher Yvonne Hasan, together with the group of artists they were members of.

  • October 26, 2024 UPDATE

    October 26, 2024 UPDATE

     

    NATURAL GAS Romania has become the EU’s largest natural gas producer, with an output of 2.3 billion cubic metres in Q2, the energy minister Sebastian Burduja announced. According to him, Romania has outperformed the Netherlands, which reported 2.2 billion cubic metres, and compared to last year Romania’s natural gas output was 1% higher. The energy minister also mentioned that during the same period Romanians benefited from the fourth-lowest gas price in Europe, according to Eurostat. As of 2027, Burduja added, Romania will practically double its gas output thanks to the deep-water natural gas drilled in the Black Sea. “We will see even better gas prices, we will attract even more investments in our economy and will help the entire region reduce its dependence on Russian gas,” he said.

     

     

    MIDDLE EAST The European Union Saturday called on all parties to exercise utmost restraint to avoid an uncontrollable escalation in the Middle East, after Israel’s retaliatory attack against Iran, AFP reports. “The dangerous cycle of attacks and retaliations risks causing a further expansion of the regional conflict,” the EU warned. Gulf countries have condemned the recent Israeli strikes on Iranian military targets, and warned against possible ripple effects in the region. In turn, Washington called on Iran not to retaliate. Should Tehran choose to strike back, we will be prepared and there will be consequences, the US Administration said. Israel announced that its operations in Iran were over, after 3 rounds of attacks on military targets, particularly the defence system and arms production facilities. Iran says the strike was countered and that damages were limited. The international community had been anticipating this operation for about a month, as a response to Iran’s missile attack on October 1.

     

     

    WINTER TIME Sunday is the longest day of the year in Romania, after switching to winter time on Saturday night, with clocks set one hour behind. The switch is aimed to save energy by aligning work hours with natural light hours. A public poll conducted by the European Commission a few years ago indicates that most Europeans are against the change. The EC considered eliminating the shift, but member states failed to agree on which of the times should be kept. A number of states have given up switches between winter and summer time, such as Mexico in 2022 and Turkey in 2016. Ukraine also decided that as of 2025 it will no longer switch to Daylight Saving Time.

     

     

    AWARD The Romanian writer Ana Blandiana received the 2024 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, in a ceremony hosted by Spain’s Royal Family at the Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo, the Romanian Cultural Institute announced on Saturday. The jury presented the award to Ana Blandiana, whose work reflects profound knowledge of the Romanian spirit during a historic period of oppression, while establishing hope and defeat as the guidelines of her literary undertaking. Ana Blandiana, the first Romanian writer to receive the award, said this was a confirmation of how her books were received in Spain and the result of the many reviews they had received, because in Spain more than in other countries, poetry is in the spotlight. Ana Blandiana, also a Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Salamanca, saw as many as 11 of her books translated into Spanish. She has so far authored more than 30 works, translated into 25 languages, and has received many international awards.

     

     

    TENNIS The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep takes on seed no. 6 Yue Yuan (China), in the first round of the WTA 250 tournament in Hong Kong. Apart from Halep, a former world leader and a wildcard in the Hong Kong tournament, Romania is also represented in the competition by Ana Bogdan, set to face Australia’s Kimberly Birrell in the first round. (AMP)

  • October 5, 2023

    October 5, 2023

    PRIZE The winner of the
    Nobel Prize in literature is to be announced today. Last year, the recipient
    was French writer Annie Ernaux for the courage and clinical acuity with which
    she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal
    memory. The 2023 Nobel season will continue with the peace prize on October 6.
    The Riksbank Sveriges prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel will
    be announced on October 9.








    IMF The priorities of the Romanian government should
    be to improve tax collection at the state budget and the elimination of the
    fiscal exemptions, the IMF experts said in Bucharest at the end of their
    periodical assessment mission. The IMF delegation has in the past two weeks assessed
    Romania’s fiscal and economic policies, forecasting a 2.3% economic growth, a
    budget deficit of 6% and an inflation rate, expected to go down from 7% to 4%,
    but at the end of the next year.






    SUMMIT Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis went to Granada to
    participate in the 3rd European Political Community Summit.
    According to the presidential administration, high on the talks agenda are
    digital transition, artificial intelligence and security. Iohannis will
    co-preside together with the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Store, a series
    of round table talks on environment-related issues, and climate change.
    Tomorrow Iohannis will be attending the informal meeting of the European
    Council, hosted in Granada by the Spanish presidency of the European Union. The
    meeting’s main objective is the launch of the reflection process over the EU’s
    future strategic agenda and some issues related to defence, resilience and
    competitiveness, the EU’s global commitment, migration and enlargement.








    ACCIDENT A family of two Romanians with two children residing in
    Germany is among the victims of the road accident involving a bus near Venice, which
    left 21 dead and 15 wounded. The vehicle fell off a bridge and caught fire. All
    the dead have been identified and the municipality decreed three days of
    mourning on Wednesday. Among those killed there are a baby and two Romanian girls,
    13 and 8 years old. The two and their parents were spending their holiday in
    Mestre. The real cause of the accident remains unknown; it’s either the driver was
    ill or he was talking on the phone. The prosecutor’s office in Venice has
    opened an investigation into the accident.




    (bill)

  • Iaşi International Literature and Translation Festival

    Iaşi International Literature and Translation Festival


    More
    than 200 professionals from the world of literature and the arts from
    Finland, France, Germany, Israel, the Republic of Moldova, Rwanda,
    Algeria, Syria and Romania are taking part in the Iaşi International
    Literature and Translation Festival – FILIT, held between the 19th
    and the 23rd
    of October.







    Like
    in previous editions, readers again have the chance to meet
    award-winning writers and important contemporary literary voices from
    Romania and abroad such as the author of the best-selling title The
    Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the Irish writer whose works have been
    translated into 58 different languages John Boyne, one of the
    best-known and most award-winning Spanish writers Manuel Vilas,
    Algerian author writing in French Boualem Sansal, Armenian writer
    Narine
    Abgaryan, who was named by The
    Guardian among the best authors of contemporary Europe and whose book
    Three
    Apples Fell from the Sky
    was a best-selling title, and the Romanian writer and philosopher
    Andrei Pleșu. The festival is hosting dozens of events, including
    meetings with authors, poetry and book readings late into the night,
    workshops and roundtable discussions for professionals as well as
    concerts.







    In
    the run-up to the festival, the FILIT Workshops for translators were
    held between 3rd
    and 7th
    October by the National Museum of Literature in Iaşi together with
    the Ipoteşti Memorial House – the Mihai Eminescu National Centre
    for Studies. The workshops provided a framework for professional
    training and discussion for translators from the Romanian into
    foreign languages and saw guests from ten countries: Jale Ismayil
    from Azerbaijan, Monica Constandache from Switzerland, Alexey Kubanov
    from Kazakhstan, Joanna Kornás-Warwas from Poland, Ferenc André and
    Csanád Száva, from Romania and translating into Hungarian, Monica
    Cure from the US and Eliza Filimon, a Romanian translator into
    English, Roxana Ilie, Romanian translator into German, Đura
    Miočinović from Serbia, Klara Rus from Slovenia, Elena Borrás from
    Spain, and Gabriella Koszta from Hungary.







    We
    talked to writer and member of the festival’s team Florin Lăzărescu
    about the importance given by the festival to translators and the
    festival’s relevance for the Romanian public:







    This
    is why we named our festival the International Literature and
    Translation Festival, because we give special attention to
    translators, especially translators from the Romanian into a foreign
    language. Apart from these workshops, the festival also features
    other events centred on translators, from professional meetings with
    literary agents and translators to translation workshops for high
    school pupils. Translators go to high schools and teach pupils how to
    make a literary translation. As for the festival’s public, 80% of
    participants are young and very young and I’m glad our festival
    means something
    to them. I’ll give you two examples. Gabriela Vieru is a well-known
    literary critic and a member of Timpul
    magazine. She has attended the festival every year, has even worked
    as a volunteer in past editions, and this year she is coordinating
    two events. She told me this festival was the first time in her life
    she met actual writers, when she was in her 9th
    year in school. I think that’s extraordinary how her life since she
    was a teenager has been marked by the festival. And she is not the
    only example. Ioan Coroamă, who is invited as a guest this year, is
    considered one of the most exciting new voices in Romanian poetry.
    When I invited him to take part, he said he’s been coming to the
    festival since he was in 6th
    form and that the festival was very important for him, he grew up
    with the festival. These meetings with writers I think are very
    important, especially for young readers. This year, the festival’s
    guests are going to 18 different high schools in Iași and other
    places around the county. This includes not just writers, but also
    translators and other professionals from the literary industry. I
    think this is one of the most important achievements of the festival,
    namely changing how literature is perceived, showing that it can also
    be spectacular, interesting, and very much alive.







    This
    year’s International Literature and Translation Festival in Iasi is
    hosting Romanian novelists Cezar
    Amariei, Remus Boldea, Adrian Cioroianu, Bogdan Coșa, Filip Florian,
    Lavinica Mitu, Liviu Ornea, Ioana Pârvulescu, Dan Perșa, Bogdan
    Suceavă, Anca Vieru; Romanian poets Răzvan Andrei, Ion Buzu, Ioan
    Coroamă, Teona Galgoțiu, Anastasia Gavrilovici, Sorin Gherguț,
    Claudiu Komartin, Ileana Negrea, Cătălina Stanislav, Veronica
    Ștefăneț and Mihók Tamás. Casa Fantasy hosts events focusing on
    the writers O.G. Arion, Michael Haulică, Liviu Surugiu, Daniel
    Timariu and Marian Truță and Casa Copilăriei is hosting
    illustrators Sidonia Călin and authors Ioan Mihai Cochinescu, Simona
    Epure, Iulia Iordan and Radu Țuculescu. The journalist Elena Stancu
    and photographer Cosmin Bumbuț are the guests of special events, and
    the photographer Mircea Struțeanu is presenting a literary and
    artistic project. (CM)

  • Radio Romania Culture Awards

    Radio Romania Culture Awards

    The 21st edition of Radio Romania Culture (RRC) Awards Gala was recently held on the stage of the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, after two years of absence caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala is the only event that grants awards in all areas of culture in Romania. During this anniversary edition awards were granted for the most important achievements of the Romanian culture in 2021. The Radio Romania Culture Excellence Award went to medical doctor Cătălin Denciu and the Intensive Care Unit team of the Piatra-Neamt County Hospital, as these people put their lives in danger to save their patients during a tragic fire in 2020. The special award for education went to the mathematics training platform MateX.xyz. The platform was created by 8 Olympiad participants with the aim of preparing poor 8th graders, online, for the National Assessment.



    The special prize for science was awarded to the founder of Graphs.ro, Dragoș Vana. His platform presented data on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic in Romania, on a daily basis, as well as information about the anti-COVID vaccination campaign. Started as a personal project, with personal resources, in April 2020, Graphs.ro has become a reference source and an indispensable tool for tracking the evolution of the pandemic in Romania. The special prize for literature was awarded to the bookshop ‘La Două bufnițe – ‘At Two Owls from Timisoara, a large-scale cultural project, an example of cultural survival in the difficult days of lockdown.



    Here are Raluca Selejan and Oana Doboşi, the founders of the bookshop At Two Owls, upon receiving the Special Prize for Literature awarded by RRC: We thank RRC and the jury who nominated us for this award. It is an award that comes at a time when we were almost ready to put down our weapons after two very difficult years, but the award reminds us that a beautiful community was formed around our bookshop, that supports us when it is very difficult for us, without knowing that it is very difficult for us. We want to thank our parents who have always supported us and thanks to whom our bookshop has survived and all our friends. The pandemic has been a difficult time because in our country, as you know, books are not essential, bookshops are not protected by law, we do not have a law on a single book price, so the only ones who can protect this market and the books are the readers. We also want to thank the teacher and writer Daniel Vighi, who believed in us as few people believed in us when we were very young, who encouraged us to become what we are today and from whom we learned that in literature there is no weekend, vacation or holidays. Its from Daniel Vighi that we also learned that the greatest joy which literature brings is that moment of solitude when the reader meets the text, and that is why we hope to bring as many books as possible as close as possible to the readers. We are urging you to support physical bookshops because booksellers are very fondly waiting for you.



    Simona Popescu received a prize at Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala for her book ‘Cartea plantelor și animalelor – ‘The Book of Plants and Animals (Nemira Publishing House). Simona Popescu is the author of the poetry volumes ‘Xilofonul şi alte poeme – ‘Xylophone and other poems (1990), ‘Pauză de respir – ‘Pause for breath (together with Andrei Bodiu, Caius Dobrescu and Marius Oprea, (1991), Juventus, (1994), reprinted entirely in the collection Opera poetica (2021), and ‘Lucrări în verde. Pledoaria mea pentru poezie – ‘Works in green. My Plea for Poetry (2006). She wrote the novel Exuvii (1997; seven editions until 2021), a volume of essays, Volubilis (1998), and books of critifiction about the surrealist poet Gellu Naum, ‘Salvarea speciei. Despre suprarealism și Gellu Naum – ‘Saving the Species. On Surrealism and Gellu Naum (2000) and ‘Clava. Critificțiune cu Gellu Naum – ‘Clava. Critifiction with Gellu Naum (2004).



    Here is Simona Popescu: I thank the jury and I feel honored to receive an award granted by RRC. Thank you for stopping in my garden with an opening to the sea and to the ocean, the garden being a metaphor for my book. It is a book of over 300 pages, with dozens of plants and animals, which are, in fact, pretexts to talk about the wide world, about the human species, not just about plants and animals, and to touch upon several themes of literature, be they great, small or average. My good thoughts go to my good friends who were also nominated, Ștefania Mihalache and Miruna Vlada, and of course to all those who wrote good and very good poetry books, and also other books, in 2021.



    In the Prose category, Alina Nelega received an award for the novel ‘un nor în formă de cămilă – ‘a cloud in the shape of a camel (Polirom Publishing House) and in the Theatre category, Andrei Mureșanu Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe received an award for the show ‘Consimțământ – ‚Consent by Evan Placey, directed by Radu Afrim. The film ‘Otto Barbarul – ‘Otto the Barbarian, directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu, received the RRC Award in the Film category, and the four solo exhibitions by Mircia Dumitrescu were awarded in the Visual Arts category. The prize in the Science category went to Răzvan Cherecheș, Director of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, for the campaign to promote the anti-COVID public health measures in Romania. In the Music category, Nicu Alifantis & Zan received an award for the album Dimov • Leoneed is love, and in the Education category, the Narada Association received an award for their projects that bring the technology of the 21st century closer to education. (LS)

  • Radio Romania Culture Awards

    Radio Romania Culture Awards

    The 21st edition of Radio Romania Culture (RRC) Awards Gala was recently held on the stage of the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, after two years of absence caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala is the only event that grants awards in all areas of culture in Romania. During this anniversary edition awards were granted for the most important achievements of the Romanian culture in 2021. The Radio Romania Culture Excellence Award went to medical doctor Cătălin Denciu and the Intensive Care Unit team of the Piatra-Neamt County Hospital, as these people put their lives in danger to save their patients during a tragic fire in 2020. The special award for education went to the mathematics training platform MateX.xyz. The platform was created by 8 Olympiad participants with the aim of preparing poor 8th graders, online, for the National Assessment.



    The special prize for science was awarded to the founder of Graphs.ro, Dragoș Vana. His platform presented data on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic in Romania, on a daily basis, as well as information about the anti-COVID vaccination campaign. Started as a personal project, with personal resources, in April 2020, Graphs.ro has become a reference source and an indispensable tool for tracking the evolution of the pandemic in Romania. The special prize for literature was awarded to the bookshop ‘La Două bufnițe – ‘At Two Owls from Timisoara, a large-scale cultural project, an example of cultural survival in the difficult days of lockdown.



    Here are Raluca Selejan and Oana Doboşi, the founders of the bookshop At Two Owls, upon receiving the Special Prize for Literature awarded by RRC: We thank RRC and the jury who nominated us for this award. It is an award that comes at a time when we were almost ready to put down our weapons after two very difficult years, but the award reminds us that a beautiful community was formed around our bookshop, that supports us when it is very difficult for us, without knowing that it is very difficult for us. We want to thank our parents who have always supported us and thanks to whom our bookshop has survived and all our friends. The pandemic has been a difficult time because in our country, as you know, books are not essential, bookshops are not protected by law, we do not have a law on a single book price, so the only ones who can protect this market and the books are the readers. We also want to thank the teacher and writer Daniel Vighi, who believed in us as few people believed in us when we were very young, who encouraged us to become what we are today and from whom we learned that in literature there is no weekend, vacation or holidays. Its from Daniel Vighi that we also learned that the greatest joy which literature brings is that moment of solitude when the reader meets the text, and that is why we hope to bring as many books as possible as close as possible to the readers. We are urging you to support physical bookshops because booksellers are very fondly waiting for you.



    Simona Popescu received a prize at Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala for her book ‘Cartea plantelor și animalelor – ‘The Book of Plants and Animals (Nemira Publishing House). Simona Popescu is the author of the poetry volumes ‘Xilofonul şi alte poeme – ‘Xylophone and other poems (1990), ‘Pauză de respir – ‘Pause for breath (together with Andrei Bodiu, Caius Dobrescu and Marius Oprea, (1991), Juventus, (1994), reprinted entirely in the collection Opera poetica (2021), and ‘Lucrări în verde. Pledoaria mea pentru poezie – ‘Works in green. My Plea for Poetry (2006). She wrote the novel Exuvii (1997; seven editions until 2021), a volume of essays, Volubilis (1998), and books of critifiction about the surrealist poet Gellu Naum, ‘Salvarea speciei. Despre suprarealism și Gellu Naum – ‘Saving the Species. On Surrealism and Gellu Naum (2000) and ‘Clava. Critificțiune cu Gellu Naum – ‘Clava. Critifiction with Gellu Naum (2004).



    Here is Simona Popescu: I thank the jury and I feel honored to receive an award granted by RRC. Thank you for stopping in my garden with an opening to the sea and to the ocean, the garden being a metaphor for my book. It is a book of over 300 pages, with dozens of plants and animals, which are, in fact, pretexts to talk about the wide world, about the human species, not just about plants and animals, and to touch upon several themes of literature, be they great, small or average. My good thoughts go to my good friends who were also nominated, Ștefania Mihalache and Miruna Vlada, and of course to all those who wrote good and very good poetry books, and also other books, in 2021.



    In the Prose category, Alina Nelega received an award for the novel ‘un nor în formă de cămilă – ‘a cloud in the shape of a camel (Polirom Publishing House) and in the Theatre category, Andrei Mureșanu Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe received an award for the show ‘Consimțământ – ‚Consent by Evan Placey, directed by Radu Afrim. The film ‘Otto Barbarul – ‘Otto the Barbarian, directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu, received the RRC Award in the Film category, and the four solo exhibitions by Mircia Dumitrescu were awarded in the Visual Arts category. The prize in the Science category went to Răzvan Cherecheș, Director of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, for the campaign to promote the anti-COVID public health measures in Romania. In the Music category, Nicu Alifantis & Zan received an award for the album Dimov • Leoneed is love, and in the Education category, the Narada Association received an award for their projects that bring the technology of the 21st century closer to education. (LS)

  • The National Museum of Romanian Literature, revamped for the 21st century

    The National Museum of Romanian Literature, revamped for the 21st century

    The
    National Museum of Romanian Literature in 2021 has been the recipient of the
    European Prize. As part of the on-line awarding ceremony for the European
    Museum Academy Awards, the DASA Award went to two of the most relevant and
    significant projects the Museum has carried in the last seven years: the main
    exhibition in the Nicolae Cretulescu Street and the Anton Pann Memorial House exhibition.
    We recall Anton Pann was a Romanian poet of the early 19th century.
    Pann was also a composer of religious music, a folklore collector, a man of letters
    and a regular contributor to various publications of his time. Here is the judging
    panel’s motivation for the award: The permanent exhibition is impressive thanks
    to its low-key yet minutely organized layout, rounding off the historical
    building which is home to the exhibition. In its educational programs, the National
    Museum of Romanian Literature has been audacious and utterly uncompromising,
    acting as a vehicle for today’s social problems. At the core of its activity
    lies interactive literature.


    Indeed, in the organization of the museum’s main
    exhibition, the curators and the museographers have first and foremost pursued
    the interaction with the public, according to the literary genres (poetry on
    the ground floor, prose, essays, literary history and criticism on the upper
    floor, while the loft is home to playwrighting). The
    museum has a heritage comprising more than 300,000 manuscripts, patrimony items and
    old books which include incunabula that are more than 500 years old. Among such
    items, there are manuscripts of works by Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Paul
    Valéry, Giovanni Papini, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Mihai Eminescu. The National
    Museum of Romanian Literature in recent years has been increasingly present on
    the literary scene in Bucharest. Specifically, the museum has staged a wide
    range of events, from academic symposia to jazz and poetry marathons. Accordingly,
    the Museum’s team has developed public reading sessions, conferences, theme
    exhibitions, creative workshops, events attended by a target audience.
    Also,
    the museum has staged internationally-recognized events, such as the Bucharest
    International Poetry Festival.


    In 2021, the Museum was home to the 11th
    edition of the Bucharest International Poetry Festival. As part of the event, public
    poetry reading sessions were being offered to the audiences by Romania authors.
    Joining them, through podcasts and video recordings were poets from England, Argentina,
    Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Peru,
    Republic of Moldova, Spain and the United States of America. Editor and writer
    Ioan Cristescu has been the Director of the National Museum of Romanian Literature
    since 2014. He told us that, among other things, his intention was to turn the
    museum into a living space. Ioan Cristescu:


    There is one thing literary history has taught us, namely a writer’s
    presence in society should be a highly significant one. Writers are prominent members
    of a community, yet they are no longer perceived like that by society, unfortunately.
    And it is not about writers and the readers’ response to their work, it’s about
    artists, broadly speaking, today artists are almost totally unknown even though
    their work enjoys European, maybe world recognition. Unfortunately, we are no longer interested in getting acquainted
    with the contemporary values. So it is for that particular reason that we sought
    to open the museum for all generations and towards all forms of artistic
    expression, with a view to creating a place, an environment where artists can manifest
    themselves. And the fact that we succeeded to mount a creative museum, that only
    enhanced our institution’s museum identity. The National Museum of
    Romanian Literature is a museum where you can do a
    lot more than merely looking at the exhibits, it is a living space. We have sought to
    find our own identity through opening the museum to everybody and we did that because
    people wanted a place like this, a place where they could express themselves.
    It is a place where you’re sure to always find something new, where each and every
    guest can put to good use their talent and erudition, qualities that seem to be
    missing in our society, more and more. What we have been meaning to achieve and,
    at that, I hope we have succeeded, is to contribute, through our activities, to
    the lay public’s getting closer to writing, to reading, we want to encourage
    reading, we want to contribute to the education of those who visit us.


    The
    National Museum of Romanian Literature also sought to maintain the connection
    with the public during the pandemic, so they created a platform, Cultura in
    direct, Live Culture, in English. The Director of the National Museum of
    Romanian Literature, Ioan Cristescu:


    We built this video platform, Live Culture, by means of which we dovetailed
    the site of the museum and our activities. Our intention was to go online,
    gradually, but also to move to television transmission. As you can see, most of
    the debates in our society are not debates focusing on the problems we think are
    important, or on cultural issues. We have been witnessing, oftentimes,
    political debates, but we, the people of the National Museum of Romanian Literature,
    are not interested in politics. What we’re interested in are debates of ideas,
    the literary and interdisciplinary debates, as the writer and their literature
    are also the outcome of what is going on in contemporary society, that is why
    we have been trying to make the connection, to find connections between literature
    and other disciplines.


    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)



  • Literature for children in Romania in the digital era

    Literature for children in Romania in the digital era


    The Fairy Tale Association has organised this autumn’s
    leading event focusing on children’s and youth literature. Running as LittleLIT
    Days, the event brought together more than 650 children who enjoyed workshops,
    public reading sessions and book launches, staged as part of the aforementioned
    project.


    For
    a whole week, more than 25 online events were held, dedicated to pupils. Among
    them, reading workshops offered by Romanian authors of children’s and youth literature,
    staged in schools around Bucharest, Timișoara and Cluj. The activities were
    dedicated to professionals in the field on children’s literature, such as
    authors, illustrators, translators, editors, PR specialists, book sellers. Part
    of the events also targeted the lay public. Together was this year’s theme,
    purposefully thought out as a feasible alternative to the social environment we
    live in, marred by fear, loneliness and isolation.

    Writer Victoria Pătrașcu, one of the founders of the Fairy Tale Association:

    When we thought out this project, that is a year ago, we never imagined things
    would be just the same, that we will still be confined indoors. We would have really
    liked to enjoy all that, together with the children, to be able to join them,
    to take their questions. Things were not the same just as we would have liked
    to, which doesn’t mean we cannot be together even in these difficult conditions,
    so that the LittleLIT story may continue, beautifully. LittleLIT stemmed from a
    collaboration between the Fairy Tale Association and EUNIC. What we had there,
    from the very outset, was an idea in a nutshell, it was a project by means of
    which we thought of taking writers of contemporary Romanian literature for
    children to their readers, so that the latter may have the chance to know those
    who craft the stories. The little ball that we had in the beginning had grown
    into a maiden edition, in 2019, themed LittleLIT Mirrorings, where we had partnerships
    with five foreign cultural institutions. Back then we had five foreign guest writers
    who gave workshops for Romanian writers as we very much want the Romanian
    writers to have examples of good practice, so they may know how to make themselves
    better known, how to become better writers, how to refine their writing. And it
    was also then that we staged meetings with potential readers, we took those writers
    to the meet the children, in schools or in rather underprivileged milieus,
    where children do not have access to culture.


    The
    LittleLIT Days, Together schedule has been thought out to highlight the importance
    of the book and reading for the development of children and in a bid to give
    them the opportunity to get acquainted with books what were written for them,
    and with those who wrote them. Equally, the project seeks to create a space of
    dialogue between children’s literature professionals (writers, editors,
    professors, reading promoters) from Romania and from other European countries. So
    The Fairy Tale Association continues to strengthen the dialogue with schools
    and the teaching staff, offering teachers specific methods for using literature
    as a method for teach the content-based items in the curricula.


    Victoria Patrascu:


    We somehow felt lonely and lost in the great Romanian literature and we
    thought it was unfair for the children’s literature to be viewed as a
    Cinderella of literature. There weren’t back then, and there still aren’t
    either, as we speak, any awards for Romanian children’s literature or if they exist,
    they’re not being awarded. Notwithstanding, there is an increasing number of
    writers of children’s literature, writers whose success has been growing. Some
    of us have got round to participating in international fairs, in the meantime,
    even at the International Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, which is something
    extraordinary, we have become increasingly aware of the importance of children’s
    literature in the world. This literature shapes up readers, it a literature
    that has been developing one year after the next. Although book sales are on
    the wane, children’s literature is on the rise, literature for children brings
    money and that’s what editors should be interested in. Many of them realized, and
    that is precisely why they created special collections, they realized children’s
    literature does have its perks, apart from those we know already: those of bringing
    up the new readers, of developing children’s emotional balance, of helping them
    develop. Now,
    returning to the 2018 moment, when we founded the Fairy Tale Association, things
    fared worse than they fare today, so we thought of turning pro. We had some
    examples as well, many of them from the Nordic countries, telling us that when
    we were together, we were able to do a lot of things. And that’s what happened,
    we were a nucleus made of four writers, Adina Rosetti, Laura Grünberg, Iulia
    Iordan and myself, who started up this Fairly Tale Association. But here we are,
    three years on, we are 20 writers already, we have three caravans who reached dozens
    of communes, as well as hundreds of workshops on the record. Also, we organize
    this event as well, the LittleLIT Days, under the form of a children’s
    literature festival. As of late, we also have a YouTube channel we want to
    develop.


    There were three keynote online launches of LittleLIT
    Days’ special guests this year. Swedish writer Åsa Lind, Swiss author Dana
    Grigorcea and Romanian writer Lavinia Braniște gathered more than 2, 000 young
    readers. Equally successful were the two big events dedicated to specialists and
    those interested to find out more about contemporary Romanian children’s
    literature – the webinar Incubator themed The domestic book market for
    children: a magical, otherworldly world facing worldly problems and the Masterclass
    given by the special guests.

    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)



  • Works by Louise Glück to be part of the ANANSI collection

    Works by Louise Glück to be part of the ANANSI collection

    At a very difficult time for the book market, when numerous publishing houses have downsized or even seized book printing due to a dramatic drop in sales, Pandora M Publishing House, part of TREI editorial group, is working on a collection of translations from universal literature. The collection, entitled ANANSI. World Fiction is being coordinated by Bogdan-Alexandru Stanescu, a writer and one of the most appreciated Romanian editors, with a 15-year experience in the field of literary translation. The new collection that bears the name of Anansi, the African god of stories, is made up of five series, namely, one dedicated to contemporary literature, one dedicated to the 20th century classics, one of literary essays, one of memoirs and one dedicated to poetry. Among the writers who form part of this collection are the Syrian Samar Yazbek, a fervent critic of the Assad regime, the Swedish Linda Boström Knausgård, the American writer, poet and literary critic Ben Lerner, a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Ahmet Altan, one of the most read Turkish writers and an outstanding journalist, all of them translated into Romanian for the first time.



    Bogdan Alexandru Stanescu tells us more about the ANANSI collection: Many editors dream of something like this, wish to coordinate such collection, but they often fail to find the support they need. The fact that the first six titles of the collection are sold out is a surprise for me as well. The novelty and quality of the titles surely mattered, as well as the graphics, the covers signed by Andrei Gamart. I would call this a rather subjective collection. I included authors that I like a lot and whom I wanted to see translated into Romanian. I could not bear the thought that Jose Luis Peixoto, one of the greatest contemporary Portuguese writers, dubbed by critics the new Saramago, has not been fully translated into Romanian. I remember that at a certain point there was a Facebook group that tried to convince publishing houses to further translate his books. And still, this didnt happen. So it’s not a coincidence that Jose Luis Peixoto was included in the first wave of the Anansi collection with his book Autobiography, translated by Simina Popa, and for me this is a dream come true. Also, it was hard for me to understand why Martin Amis, one of the most influential and innovative voices of British contemporary literature was not being translated. In the case of Paul Auster, I must admit this is my favourite of all his books – Moon Palace, translated by Michaela Niculescu. I believe the role of a publishing house is also to educate the taste of readers. I do not think is right not to have masterpieces in our libraries because they were translated and published 20 years ago and reediting is seen as not having any sense. Unfortunately, many people in the book industry do not understand the value of reediting. Its purpose is to keep on the market and among the readersoptions, a number of masterpieces. This is how the reediting of I, Claudius, a historical novel by Robert Graves, translated by Silvian Iosifescu, is justified.



    The most awaited come back in Romanian poetry, this is how literary critic Mihai Iovanel describes the poetry book of Ruxandra Novac, published as part of the Anansi collection : Ruxandra Novac is, in a way, the reason behind the Anansi Blues poetry series. I say this because when we decided to publish this poetry book, entitled Alwarda, the collection was almost fully sketched. It was when we decided to publish Ruxandra Novacs volume that we thought of a series devoted entirely to poetry. Starting this year, we will publish the work of the 2020 Nobel Prize winner in literature, Louise Gluck. When the award was announced, many people said on social networks that they had never heard of her, although she has been a heavy name of the American poetry in the last 50 years. I promise more people will hear of Louise Gluck in Romania as well.



    Also part of the Anansi collection are volumes that won the world’s most important literature prizes in 2020, such as L’Anomalie, that brought French writer Hervé Le Tellier the Goncourt Prize, the book of Maggie O’Farrell, that brought her the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the novel The Discomfort of Evening, by Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, awarded with The International Booker Prize, and also Shuggie Bain, the debut novel of the Scottish writer Douglas Stuart, that won the The Booker Prize 2020.



  • Seeing the world by train: accounts by Romanian travellers

    Seeing the world by train: accounts by Romanian travellers

    One of the greatest inventions of mankind is the railway, and the changes it brought about in modern world have been outstanding. Even after other means of transportation were discovered, railway remained the favourite way to travel for many, and, improved from one generation to the next, it still has a great future ahead of it.



    In Romania, railroads were first built after the union of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859 and entailed a radical change in the way the world was perceived. Romanians started to travel increasingly longer distances and to write about what they saw.



    Historian Radu Mârza is a professor with Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, and author of a book entitled “Romanian travellers looking out the train window: a tentative cultural history (1830-1930). We asked Radu Mârza what would Romanian travellers see out the train windows?



    “They would see lots of things. At first sight, they seem to be very interested in landscapes. But after I went through a lot of sources, I reached the conclusion that their primary interest is not so much the landscape, but the people. They look out the window at the people outside, the people in railway stations, and, not least, the people travelling alongside them on trains. They would take an interest in the places they visit, but the concept of a natural landscape, which was the starting point of my research, only catches the Romanian travellers attention later on, around the turn of the 20th century. For instance, A. D. Xenopol wrote beautiful pages about the Semmering railroad in Austria, or about his crossing the Alps by train. I could also mention Mihail Sadoveanu, who travelled to the Netherlands in the 1920s and was interested not so much in nature, but in the human presence: from the people working their gardens to the very modern image of the Dutch towns where railroads cross roads and canals. He was interested in the Dutch plants, electricity networks, railway stations.



    What railroads brought about was mobility: the movement of commodities, of businesses, and, above all, of people.



    “Mobility grew spectacularly compared to previous times and previous means of transportation. For example, the train journey from Bucharest to Karlsbad, Karlovy Vary in todays Czech Republic, would take around 72 hours in the 1920s, as compared to a week or two on the road in pre-railway times. So mobility simply exploded. And obviously this increased mobility helped people travel longer distances, more easily and comfortably. The railway car is at the same time a place of interaction and non-interaction. People can engage in a dialogue, in an interaction with their fellow passengers, but there are also travellers who are unwilling to interact, who just want to be left alone. Sadoveanu has a paragraph about how much he longed to be left alone, while the great novelist Liviu Rebreanu also tells us about the insistence with which another train passenger asked him to engage in conversation.



    But trains can also be dark places, places of crimes and even murder. We asked Radu Mârza whether Romanian travellers talk about this side as well:



    “I havent seen accounts of this kind, but I do remember a story by George Bariț, about a very interesting experience during his travels in Germany in 1852. He says in the Magdeburg railway station, where the train arrived at night, he was amazed to see 4 tracks going to 4 different directions, which was absolutely astonishing for him. And one of the funny things he noticed written on the walls of the station was a warning saying, ‘Beware of pickpockets!



    Railroads connected not only people, but also provinces, countries and continents. Radu Mârza told us that this connection was not only political in nature:



    “In the Old Kingdom of Romania, this was quite evident, and 19th Century travellers say that themselves. They understand that the railway is a means of connecting the country, not necessarily for political or sentimental reasons, but for the purpose of mobility and communication. And while in the West, in the beginning there were some reservations and criticism concerning trains, this was not the case in our part of the world. This is confirmed by the number of passengers, the number of tickets sold, which is quite relevant because it proves that from the very beginning the Romanian public welcomed train traveling with open arms.



    Romanians discovered the world from the train window and enjoyed it greatly. And the world, in turn, became smaller, more familiar, and more welcoming. (translated by: A.M. Popescu)

  • A different history of Romanian literature

    A different history of Romanian literature

    Despite the pandemic, this year saw
    the publication by Polirom of a considerable collective work consisting of five
    volumes and entitled The Encyclopaedia of the Imaginaries (Enciclopedia
    Imaginariilor). With contributions from writers and academics, the work
    looks at five different areas of cultural production, namely literature,
    history, religion, linguistics and the arts. A concept that transgresses the notion
    of imagination and fantasy, which is seen as merely producing illusions, fiction
    and imaginary worlds, the imaginary has for a number of years become an
    independent subject of academic study in Romania as well, says Corin Braga, the
    editor of the volume dedicated to literature:

    The imaginary is a function that
    structures our forms of knowledge just like reason and the senses. It helps us
    understand the way in which we relate to the world. We can speak of social
    imaginary, collective imaginaries, and also individual imaginaries. The
    collective imaginaries can be divided according to different fields: literary,
    historical, theatrical, artistic, etc. There even exists a religious and
    geographical imaginary, and even a linguistic imaginary. That’s how this
    encyclopaedia is divided, with each volume dealing with a different field. The
    first volume explores the literary imaginary, namely the representations that
    inform the visions and imaginary universes in the theatre plays, novels and
    poetry that together form Romanian literature.



    The volume about the literary
    imaginary contains 20 chapters written by 20 different authors and edited by
    Corin Braga. The first chapter is about folk literature, which is described
    from the point of view of the images that make up the special universe of folk
    production. It is therefore an approach that differs from conventional literary
    history, which is based on chronology, and from thematic history, which is
    based on ideas. Corin Braga explains:


    Literary history usually covers
    shorter or longer periods, depending on their focus, whether on centuries or
    literary movements, so we can speak of old literature, 18th century
    literature, the Enlightenment, Romanticism and 1848 literature, the literature
    of our great classic authors, inter-war literature and post-war literature. This
    encyclopaedia, however, without ignoring conventional chronology, groups the material
    in a different way, namely into constellations of symbols that transcend
    historical periods and literary movements and which can be found both in the 18th
    century as well as in the 20th century. The chapter dedicated to the
    folk universe is followed by one about the religious imaginary in Romanian
    literature, namely religious representation. It starts with a number of religious
    rather than literary texts written by the likes of Dosoftei and Anthimus of Iberia
    and goes all the way up to the 20th century to writers who found
    inspiration in religion: the Psalms of Tudor Arghezi and the poems of Lucian
    Blaga, Ioan Alexandru and Vasile Voiculescu. We were particularly interested in
    the constellations of symbols that make up a system to see how they have
    evolved until the present day.



    Literature inspired by history is
    given the same treatment in The Encyclopaedia of the Imaginaries in Romania.
    Chronology is not eliminated entirely, says the editor of the volume Corin Braga,
    but overly restrictive categories are broken down:

    The volume contains a number of
    articles referring to the Enlightenment and the rational and cultural imaginary
    of the authors belonging to this movement. Another chapter looks at the
    Levantine, Balkan imaginary, of Oriental inspiration, in Romanian literature,
    another at the Romantic imaginary, or the Decadentist imaginary. I’m going to
    give you an example from Romantic literature, which has its own characteristic
    phrases: it entails a form of pre-Romanticism and another of militant
    Romanticism, from around 1848, and great Romanticism as represented by Eminescu,
    who is on par with the likes of Novalis and Byron. However, Romantic imagery
    and themes, such dreams, love and ghosts, are still found in Romanian literature
    beyond Romanticism. They can be found, for example, in the works of the
    contemporary writer Mircea Cărtărescu,
    who employs dream-like images reminiscent, somewhat, of Eminescu. There was
    even a group of oneiric poets, such as Leonid Dimov and Dumitru Țepeneag, who are
    in the tradition of the great Romantic oneirism, despite having their own definitions.



    The Encyclopaedia of the Imaginaries in
    Romania thus provides not only a fresh perspective on the history of Romanian
    culture, but also new interpretations of the connection between past and
    present in literature and beyond.



  • October 17, 2020

    October 17, 2020

    VOTING The Romanian foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu called on all Romanians living abroad to vote by mail, and reminded them that October 22 is the deadline for registration for this type of voting for the December 6 parliamentary election. Bogdan Aurescu warned that postal voting is the best way to protect Romanians health in the current pandemic. The foreign minister also says the full list of the documents required for voting is available on the ministrys home page in the section devoted to this years general election. The Foreign Ministry warned several times that some countries have restrictions in place, which will affect the number of polling stations that the Romanian authorities will be allowed to open abroad.



    COVID-19 In Romania, a new record-high number of coronavirus infections in 24 hours has been reported—4026, according to the Strategic Communication Group. The overall number of cases is 172,516. Also, 75 more people died, taking the death toll to 5,749. A new negative record was also reported in terms of ICU patients—726. The authorities are seeking solutions to make sure as many hospitals as possible are involved in the fight against the pandemic. The head of the Department for Emergencies, Raed Arafat, said that according to experts this second wave of the pandemic may last throughout the winter. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, over 1,000 schools in the country operate exclusively online. The Education Ministry says over 11,300 schools still work in the face-to-face teaching system, while 5,235 schools use both in-person and online classes.



    PANDEMIC The World Health Organisation warns that several European cities are facing a surge in the number of COVID-19 patients that require intensive care, and that ICUs may reach their full capacity in the coming weeks. NATO is prepared to provide assistance to Europe. According to the deputy secretary general of the Alliance, Mircea Geoană (Romania), NATO already has a special fund and logistical support plans in place for member and partner states. He explained that NATOs main concern is for the current healthcare crisis not to turn into a security crisis. France Press reports new restrictions introduced across Europe. In London, a ban on households mixing indoors came into force on Saturday, after on Friday 15,000 new infections were confirmed in the UK. In 10 major cities in France, including Paris and its suburbs, a curfew is in place as of Saturday between 9:00 PM and 6:00 AM. The measure will be in place for at least 4 weeks, amid a rise in the number of daily new cases to over 25,000. New restrictions are also introduced in Warsaw and other Polish cities included in a “red-zone: high-schools and colleges are switching to the online mode, restaurants will only be open until 9 PM, weddings are banned and the number of people entering shops, churches and public transport will be restricted.



    DATATHON Romania won the first prize in the 4th challenge, “A Europe fit for the digital age, in the EU Datathons online final. The Romanian teams submission, which also won a check for 12,000 euro, is called Digital Dryads, and is designed to protect forests from illegal logging using spectral analysis, machine learning and state-of-the-art satellite imagery produced under the EU Copernicus programme. The EU Datathon is an annual competition inviting original ideas on how to exploit EU Open Data.



    DEFENCE The Romanian Defence Ministry welcomes the approval by the US State Department of Romanias application for purchase of the Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defence Systems. The clearing has been forwarded to the US Congress. The Naval Strike Missile is a sea-skimming, over-the-horizon anti-ship missile, and Romania wants to buy two of the systems under one of the 5 programmes in the Romanian Armys upgrade plan. The proposed sale will improve Romanias capability to meet current and future threats by improving Romanias maritime defence capabilities in the Black Sea.



    LITERATURE A Romanian-British literature festival is held online and in London as of today until November 13. Entitled Romania Rocks, the event brings together Romanian and British authors and translators, and is designed to promote Romanian literature around the world. All events may be accessed free of charge on the communication channels of the Romanian Cultural Institute and the European Literature Network. (translated by: A.M. Popescu)

  • The Sofia Nadejde Awards Gala for Literature by Women

    The Sofia Nadejde Awards Gala for Literature by Women

    Todays edition is about the Sofia Nadejde Awards Gala for Literature by Women, held in Bucharest. The winners of this third edition were Sputnik in the Garden, by Gabriella Eftimie, Sonia Raises Her Hand, by Lavinia Braniste, Fotocrom Paradis, by Deniz Otay, and Marcels Children, by Ema Stere. The name of the gala is in dedication to a major figure in Romanian culture, Sofia Nadejde, the first woman in Romania to be allowed to hold her high school graduation in a boys gymnasium, the first woman to lead a literary magazine, and author of the first feminist novel in the history of Romanian literature.



    The Sofia Nadejde Awards Gala for Literature by Women was held as part of the Sofia Nadejde Days event, which started in late August with an evening of short films made by women. Here is poet and journalist Elena Vladareanu, initiator of the gala:

    “I was interested right from the start by this intersection of arts, and this year we have a partnership with the Romanian Association of Women in Cinema. As such, the writers nominated for fiction will take part in a series of meetings with the directors selected after the call issued by this association. It is equally important that, starting this year, we have a partnership with Scena.ro, the most important platform in the country dedicated to theater. Starting with the previous edition, Scena.ro grants a special drama award as part of the Sofia Nadejde Awards, and the prize this year went to Alexandra Pazgu, a very interesting playwright who has been living in Vienna for a few years, and who started writing in German. Speaking of this intersection of the arts, I would also like to emphasize the long term partnership with tranzit.ro, long term because we have been running a series of debates with them. In addition, tranzit.ro is a partner in this gala, they helped financially by offering one of the prizes. I think this intersection is very important, I also hope that we will be able to hold the workshop proposed by artist Liliana Basarab, a workshop centered on the book as an object, which starts off from the nominated books.”




    At the gala, Sanda Cordos was awarded the special award A Room Just for Them, granted for the effervescence with which, for decades, she has been supporting contemporary Romanian literature with her articles. Gratiela Benga-Tutuianu critic and literary historian, is a member of the jury of the Gala:

    “It is, in my opinion, a very good choice, because nothing bad can be said about Sanda Cordos and her persuasive criticism work. Also, this choice is an answer given to a reality that makes us sad most of the time. Because many times we have seen how critics and literary historians are still referring to the literature and criticism written by women in perpetual minority terms, and in thematic and stylistic stereotypes. And if we apply an honest reading to everything that Sanda Cordos has written, it is an answer to such criticism. Unfortunately, we are part of a literature that we still carve up into categories, male and female, and this boxing seems to me totally inadequate, because literature has to reflect the whole world, humanity means more than limiting oneself to a given formula.”




    Poet and translator Alexandra Turcu and visual artist Liliana Basarab have been part of the Sofia Nadejde Awards for Literature by Women since the first edition. We talked to them about the need for such an event, and the reactions it elicited. Here is Alexandra Turcu:

    “I realized that I wanted to help literature more than I wanted to write it, especially help literature by women, and for this reason I joined the initiative launched by Elena Vadareanu. I had various reactions, some of them negative after the first edition, and I got discouraged for a moment, but as time went by I realized that these awards are welcome, and they have grown from one edition to the next. Even if there are still unfavorable reactions to this project, I believe it is very important that we continue it. I believe this is precisely the idea of the awards, more than just granting some prizes, they want to dismantle prejudices towards literature written by women, and towards the place of women in the world in general.”




    And here is Liliana Basarab:

    “I had the feeling that I had very much to learn while working with the Sofia Nadejde Awards team, and that we were building them up together. As you have heard before, this initiative is not limited to giving out some prizes. The Sofia Nadejde Days include a lot of activities that come in recognition of womens creations, the more so that I see the need for such undertaking, and I hope this continues. I believe these awards have started to produce changes in mentality. Which Is why I think they should be continued, and we should find new ways of emphasizing the creations of women, which sometimes are not appreciate, or treated as minor art.”

  • Urmuz, an author of the absurd

    Urmuz, an author of the absurd

    Urmuz’s real name was Demetru Dem.
    Demetrescu-Buzău and he was born in March 1883 in the small central town of
    Curtea de Argeș. A forerunner of
    surrealism and the literature of the absurd, Urmuz was an enigmatic and bizarre
    figure, just like his literature, which was aesthetically captivating despite the
    fact that the words didn’t seem to make much sense. The literary critic and historian
    Paul Cernat tells us more about Urmuz’ odd personality:




    Urmuz was a
    lonely and shy man, whose life was just as bizarre as his life. It appears that
    he first trained to become a doctor but gave up because during dissections, he’d
    get a fright when he would pinch the dead bodies and they wouldn’t react. So he
    took up law instead and became a clerk at the Court of Cassation. He also concerned
    himself with music, being an amateur composer in his free time and writing
    music to entertain his family, as one of his sisters recounted. Unfortunately,
    his music scores have not survived, having been lost in the 1960s. Literature
    was a secret passion of his, even more so than music. He knew the writer and
    poet Tudor Arghezi, who gave him the penname Urmuz and who published his work.
    In fact, the only works Urmuz would ever publish appeared thanks to Arghezi in
    the magazine Cuget românesc, a very traditionalist publication,
    ironically. This was in 1922. Urmuz committed suicide in 1923, shooting himself
    in the bushes on the side of a popular street in the north of Bucharest where
    people often went for walks. The reason is unclear, and there were speculations
    about an unhappy love affair or a terrible disease that no one knew about. The
    many stories that circulated around Urmuz’ enigmatic, secretive and
    subterranean personality eventually turned him into something of a myth. This myth
    is very much alive today and is the foundation of the Romanian literature of
    the absurd.




    Urmuz’s dull existence as a clerk and his unexplained
    suicide combined with his apparently absurd works have contributed to the
    fascination he still exerts on his readers, who wonder if there’s a connection
    between his literature and his life. Critic Paul Cernat elaborates on this:




    He was a strange man who liked to play but
    who also probably had some traumas. He was compared with Kafka, based on their
    relationships with their fathers. In reality, however, we don’t know very much
    about him, in fact we know very little, and any speculation is plausible. As
    far as Urmuz was concerned, there was a split between his public identity and
    his private, secret identity, between his public image as a dull clerk and his
    identity as an anarchic writer whose work was breaking all the rules of
    literature at that time. Despite their anarchic and absurd appearance, his
    works were very polished and the result of painstaking effort. Urmuz was like Flaubert,
    paying attention to every word and the orchestration of his little texts.




    Even the two texts published during his
    lifetime, Algazy and
    Grummer and Ismaïl and Turnavitu had been chiselled up to the very last
    minute before publication. According to Tudor Arghezi, Urmuz wanted to change
    some words even after they were sent to the printers. Critic Paul Cernat:




    Urmuz’ small but explosive
    body of work became really known after his death, some of it appearing in the
    1920s in the Contimporanul
    magazine published by Ion
    Vinea and Marcel Iancu. But most of his work appeared in UNU magazine, being published by
    the writers Sașa Pană and Geo Bogza who in the 1930s contacted Urmuz’ sister, who
    had a chest full of his manuscripts. They published whatever they found there
    and which hadn’t been published before. And it seems there’s still more to be
    published. (…) A lot has been lost, but what we do have is more than enough to
    ensure Urmuz a status he would never have dreamt of.




    Urmuz had a great influence
    on the generation of avantgarde writers after the First World War and beyond. Tudor
    Arghezi’s prose was also influenced by Urmuz. The generations of post-1965
    writers, the so-called Târgoviște school and the poets Marin Sorescu and Nichita
    Stănescu also showed the influence of Urmuz, which can even be traced in today’s
    post-modernist literature.