Radio România Internațional

Tag: poetry

  • 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.

  • Writer Nora Iuga, the subject of a documentary film

    Writer Nora Iuga, the subject of a documentary film

    One of the most successful Romanian films last year
    was Nora, written and directed by Carla-Maria Teaha. The first foray into
    documentary film-making from Teaha, who has previously worked as an actor and
    radio journalist, the film follows Nora Iuga, one of the most important writers
    in this country, who turned 93 years old on 4th January. Released in
    2023 at the Transylvania International Film Festival and also screened at
    Anonimul and Astra Film Festival, Nora creates a touching portrait of
    this charismatic writer and poet who made her debut in 1968 with a
    book of poems (Vina nu e a mea), received a number of awards from the Writers’
    Union and has remained very active, publishing an autobiographical
    novel (Hipodrom) in 2020 and another book of poems in 2023 (Fetiţa strigă-n
    pahar, Nemira).

     

     

    Shot over the course of four years, the film also
    captures Nora Iuga’s fascinating inner life as she has retained her
    youth and contagious exuberance, as well as the special friendship
    between her and the director, who accompanies Iuga at the Frankfurt
    Book Fair. We spoke to Carla-Maria Teaha about how she created
    the documentary film and the enthusiastic response of the public:

     

     

    I didn’t have a certain script in
    mind, especially for our trip to Frankfurt. From the very beginning I
    wanted the dialogue to be created by speaking freely with Nora. Starting
    from what would appear to be mere chit-chat, my intention was
    to get Nora Iuga to tell her stories, because along with other qualities,
    she is a fascinating story-teller and the camera loves her. This is why I never
    felt the need to introduce other characters that would speak about her. As this
    is my first film and I didn’t have a lot of experience in this area, I relied a
    lot on my intuition and I wanted to show Nora Iuga as I see her. I decided I
    wanted it to be a film about this Nora Iuga even if I would fail, so I based it
    on the chemistry between us and the things that I find touching about her. And
    what’s fascinating is that people were able to relate to me, to this image I
    had of her. Deep down I hoped this would happen, I hoped Nora Iuga’s charm
    would have the same effect on the public that she had on me. Moreover, I worked
    very hard on this film. I was brimming with joy at the reaction of the
    audience, when, at TIFF, the film received standing ovations after the first
    screening, on June 14 last year. People also stayed for the Q&A session,
    nobody left. And somehow that very strong impact the film had on the audience
    did not diminish at all, after the screening in theatres people stay in there a
    little longer and applaud, even though we’re not speaking about a special event
    and we are not there with them to have discussions. I am very happy because of that, I am happy
    because film had such an impact and because it has done its job, I am happy it
    touches people. I really thought it was just as normal for Nora Iuga’s fans to
    be keen on watching the film, but I am also glad that even those who didn’t
    know her or were unfamiliar with her work, fell in love with her. So many
    people told me that, having watched the documentary, they bought her books,
    searched for interviews with her, they were even looking for info about her. It
    is wonderful that, through this film, we succeeded to bring fil aficionados and
    reader together, these two bubbles somehow met, which is great, I think.

     

     

    Before becoming a writer, Nora Iuga wanted to become
    an actress, so the documentary made by Carla Maria-Teaha made Nora Iuga’s dream
    come true.

     

    To tell you the truth, I wanted
    to become an actress ever since I was in high-school. I ‘ve always wanted to
    become an actress, perhaps it is something that comes from my family, my
    parents were artists and so were my grandparents. My mother was a ballerina,
    father, a violinist, one of the grannies was an opera singer, a grandparent was
    a stage director, so I never thought of myself as taking a career path which
    was different from that of an actress. I have always dreamed of that, what’s
    most astonishing is the fact that I have never ceased to want to become an
    actress, even after the great actor Radu Beligan flunked me at the Drama School
    admission exam, telling me my elocution was not good enough. I personally do
    not think there is a problem with my elocution, other people didn’t tell me
    that either, yet I cannot question Radu Beligan either. Now, returning to the film
    made by Carla Maria Teaha, as days go by, it comes as something clearer and
    clearer to me that it was all about a miracle, a very old dream of mine came
    true just now, after a lifetime.

     

     

    Mircea Cărtărescu heaped praise on Nora Iuga’s most
    recent poetry volume. Fetita striga-n pahar is hitherto the peak
    of Nora Iuga’s poetry and one of the most powerful poetry books I have read
    recently. It is like a shrapnel exploding in your face, spreading splinters,
    shards, rough pieces of metal, of memory, of brain, of quotes, of any kind of
    stuff suitable to write on your skin the judgement of a fragmented, abused
    beauty .

     

  • Happening in Romania

    Happening in Romania

    The Embassy of Georgia in Romania and the “Mihai Eminescu” Cultural Center in Bucharest have organized an exquisite cultural event to launch the trilingual publication “Treasures of Georgian and Romanian poetry. Nikoloz Baratashvili and Mihai Eminescu. Stories of two poets”.

    The publication, brought out in Georgian, Romanian and English, includes a selection of poems by the two national poets of Georgia and Romania. RRI’s Eugen Cojocariu has had a talk with the Ambassador of Georgia to Bucharest, Tamar Beruchashvili, about this event.

  • September 12, 2023 UPDATE

    September 12, 2023 UPDATE

    Welfare. Some
    2 million vulnerable households in Romania will benefit from fresh financial
    aid starting this week. It’s the second instalment, worth 140 euros, for the
    payment of bills for electricity, heat, gas and other fuels that can be
    used to heat homes. The first tranche was disbursed at the beginning of the
    year. In total, the amount received in 2023 by a family with financial problems
    is 1,400 lei, from European funds. In another move, starting next month,
    pensioners with incomes lower or equal to 3,000 lei (around 600 euros) will
    benefit from the second instalment of the aid granted by the state.
    Moreover, this year, the Romanian citizens belonging to vulnerable categories
    are getting from the state social cards, which means 50 euros every two months
    for food and warm meals. According to the Labour Minister, this measure
    benefits approximately 2.5 million people.






    Poetry. The
    13th International Poetry Festival got under way in Bucharest on Monday. For
    one week, the event, appreciated by specialists as one of the most watched in
    Europe, brings together over 170 poets from 27 countries on four continents.
    The programme includes meetings with poets, translators and publishers, public
    readings, debates, round tables, poetry marathons or performances, but also theatre
    shows, film screenings and concerts, exhibitions and events dedicated to
    professionals. As part of the International Poetry Festival, a well-known and
    popular project is also organised, the National Poetry Book Fair, which brings
    to the fore recently published books of poetry.




    NATO. The
    Deputy Secretary General of NATO, the former Romanian foreign minister Mircea
    Geoană, has stated that there are no indications that the Russian Federation
    intends to attack a member state of the Alliance, but the concern of the
    Romanian citizens who live near the Danube border with Ukraine is understandable.
    My message, as a Romanian, is to try to have faith in the fact that the
    North Atlantic Alliance has all the measures in place to ensure the protection
    of the entire allied space, including Romania, Geoană also said. He
    welcomed the US’s decision to add air policing missions in the Black Sea
    area. In another development, a joint military exercise is taking place, until
    Friday, in the Black Sea and the Danube Delta. 227 soldiers, including 164
    Romanian and 63 foreign, are participating in the multinational exercise Sea Breeze,
    organised by the United States of America for the first time in Romania. The training
    contributes to increasing stability in the Black Sea region and ensuring
    freedom of navigation, as a result of the Russian aggression against
    Ukraine.




    Schengen.
    The growth of extremism should not be neglected but counteracted by showing
    that the EU matters, said European Parliament president Roberta Metsola. She
    said a decision to block the entry of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen
    free-movement area risks leading to
    multiplying those wishing to destroy Europe. Roberta Metsola also called on the EU to
    prepare for a restart and reform. She also said that a bigger Europe is
    stronger and safer in both political and economic terms. Her statements come 9
    months after the Austrian government voted against the Schengen accession of
    Romania and Bulgaria.






    Tennis.
    The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep on Tuesday received a four-year ban
    from professional tennis from the International Tennis Integrity Agency, the
    independent body that assessed her case. The decision is not final and can be
    appealed before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. A former
    world no. 1, Halep played her last match a year ago before being suspended provisionally
    for doping. The International Tennis Integrity Agency
    postponed a ruling several times. Her hearings took place in London in July.
    According to the Agency, Halep was charged with two separate doping offences.
    The first was using a banned substance, roxadustat, at the US Open last year and the second relates to
    irregularities in her Athlete Biological Passport. (CM)

  • March 21, 2023

    March 21, 2023

    TALKS Russian
    president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are currently having
    talks in Moscow. Economic cooperation is high on the agenda on the second day
    of the Chinese President’s three-day visit to Moscow. Yesterday, the two
    leaders tackled the war in Ukraine and the two sides are expected to sign two
    major agreements on expanding the strategic bilateral cooperation and
    partnership. According to sources in Moscow, the talks’ agenda also includes technical-military
    cooperation between the two sides, amid the West’s fears that Beijing could
    supply weapons to Russia for the war the latter is presently waging on Ukraine.
    According to experts, the Chinese president’s visit is important for president
    Putin who can now prove that Russia isn’t internationally isolated. China
    hasn’t condemned the war in Ukraine but has been engaged in peace talks and at
    the beginning of his visit president Jinping has underlined China’s neutral
    stand.








    CUT Last year Romania
    managed to slightly curb the number of road accidents by 200 as compared to
    2021. Fatalities from road accidents were also reduced by 145 and the number of
    wounded by 100. In 2022 Romania reported 47 hundred accidents and 1,630
    fatalities. 37 hundred people were also severely injured. According to the
    Romanian Police General Inspectorate, these have been the lowest figures in the
    past decade. Road traffic police are these days conducting a series of
    preventive activities on the high-risk sections of the country’s road network.








    DAY Numerous events have been announced in
    Romania on the World Poetry Day marked on March 21. The National Museum of
    Literature in Bucharest has scheduled a series of public lectures, exhibitions
    and shows in libraries and education units as well as several outdoor events
    focusing on poetry. At the Ipotesti Memorial in north-eastern Romania, The Mihai
    Eminescu National Study Center is staging the traditional poetry marathon
    involving the participation of almost 20 authors. The National Museum of
    Literature in Iasi, eastern Romania is also staging a poetry marathon.








    PLAN Romania is one of the 17 EU members to have endorsed the EU
    joint weapon-purchase plan, which will enable the EU nations to jointly
    purchase weapons amid growing appeals from Ukraine for more military support.
    According to EU officials the initiative will allow the EU to replenish arms
    that have already been provided to Ukraine. The plan has been drawn up by the
    European Defence Agency in an attempt to connect the weapon demands of the EU
    members and Ukraine and the European arms industry. The programme has two lines
    of procurement, one for the 155 mm howitzer shells for a period of two years
    and for other types of ammunition for a period of seven years. The plan’s third
    component is focusing on raising the production capabilities of some weapon
    producers in the EU.




    (bill)

  • Romanian well-established writers’ recent accomplishments

    Romanian well-established writers’ recent accomplishments



    Nora Iuga, one of the most critically-acclaimed living writers, is the author of Hippodrome, a novel brought out by the Polirom Publishers in Bucharest. Having got her novel published, Nora Iuga said she was having a rest after that, writing poetry.



    Poet, prose writer and translator Nora Iuga was born on January 4, 1931. She is a member of the PEN Club and a member of Romanian Writers’ Union. Nora Iuga has got more than 20 volumes published so far, poetry and prose. Here are some of the titles of her works: I’m not the one to blame (1968), The Captivity of the Circle (1970), Opinions on Pain (1980), Heart as a Boxer’s Punch (1982, 2000), The Sky Square (1986), The Night Typist (1996, 2010), The Dummies’ hospital (1998, 2010), The Hump-backed Bus (2001, 2010), Party in Montrouge (2012), The Wet Dog is a willow tree (2013), Hear the brackets crying (2016), Leopold Bloom’s Soap Bar (1993), The Sexagenarian and the Young Man (2000), Harald and the Blue Moon (2014).



    Nora Iuga’s prose and poetry works have been translated into several languages. In 2007, Nora Iuga was the recipient of the Friedrich-Gundolf Prize, awarded by Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, (The German Academy for Language and Literature). In 2015, at the recommendation of the President of Germany, Joachim Gauck, Nora Iuga was awarded the Cross of Merit Order in the Rank of Knight. In 2017, Romanian president Klaus Iohannis bestowed the National Order of Merit in the Rank of Commander on Nora Iuga.



    We had Nora Iuga as a guest on RRI. We invited the distinguished senior writer to speak about her most recent novel, Hippodrome. It is a book with an obvious autobiographical character, dedicated to the city she was brought up in: Sibiu. It is There that she met the Ursuline nuns, it is There that she saw Jovis, the white horse, in Schuster’s window case. The horse still lingers in her memory. It is also there that she taught German during the communist regime, becoming one of the pupils’ favorite teachers.



    Nora Iuga:



    The project of this book dates a while back. It should be 15 years now, I guess, since I have been thinking I owe this city. But it’s not that I owe it like it’s a liability, like it’s a sum of money I borrowed and I need to return. I insist, all throughout the book, on that particular name, Hermannstadt, as it’s that city I have been most attached to, Hermannstadt, and less to the Sibiu of today. As it was there that for the first time I felt the thrill of love, when I was ten, without realizing what that mix of feelings meant, I just couldn’t explain the feeling I had on a winter night, when I was on the main street running to the Romans’ Emperor, Sibiu’s most important Saxon hotel. It was there that my daddy had his live concerts, he was a violinist and head of the orchestra, and I was hurrying to give him the little pine three cake he had to rosin his bow hair with. This city also occasioned encounters with people whose influence on my destiny was crucial. Unfortunately, quite a few of them have for long not been among us. No more nuns, my nuns of the Ursuline Monastery, to whom I owe half of my being. Whenever, in my books, I bring up Nora A and Nora B, I am not doing that randomly, I am made of two halves that are at loggerheads with one another, but that’s not unusual. I am dead positive that in every human being, there are two antagonistic and almost incompatible characters who quarrel all the time. And if Nora A is the frantically larksome one, Nora B is the wiser one and she is always lecturing Nora A.



    Here is Nora Iuga once again, this time speaking about how she constructed Hippodrome, the novel that captured a life lived under three dictatorships, two of them instated by Carol II and Ion Antonescu, followed by the third dictatorship, the communist one.



    There are two distinct categories of writers, those who construct, while the other ones let themselves lead by that uncontrolled inner flow, and I certainly belong to the second category. That uncontrolled inner flow can be quite like memories, since we cannot control the memories coming upon us. And so vivid are some of those memories that they almost frighten us, it is thanks to our memories that we can relive certain events as they really happened, well, almost. It seems to me memories can be compared with the dreams that can take the shape of the things that happened long before, yet in a slightly changed manner. Notwithstanding, we can identify those events that happened a long time ago, we know that a long, long time ago, we might have lived that. When old age comes, when you find yourself all alone, the greatest joy is to be able to go deeper into your inner self, but that does not mean you must relate to your biographical past.


    Just as it can be also seen in the book, I lived under three dictatorships and I can say I am still very fond of the time of monarchy during which I lived when I was a child and for which I have vivid memories that still linger in my mind, I cannot imagine a time more beautiful than that. I have always lived under the sign of contradictions, but as a child I did not realize it was unjust to walk barefoot just as I saw hucksters walking. Funny thing is, when I look back at that, right now, I seem to watch a movie which is full of poetry. What I’m trying to say is that I just cannot be too hard on everybody, I believe each and every one of us has very deep roots in childhood, and those roots cannot be torn up by anyone. Things that today can be rectifiable, for me they were a source of joy.


    (EN)




  • FiRMA plays “Selected Poems”

    FiRMA plays “Selected Poems”

    The most recent album by the band FiRMA, SELECTED POEMS, VOL. I, was brought out in late 2018 by the Casa Radio Publishers. The album includes nine songs composed by the band’s vocalist, Daniel Rocca Stoicea, on lyrics by Romanian classical and contemporary poets. SELECTED POEMS, VOL I is also one of the rare encounter points where rock music mixes with poetry, as poetry is sung by the band but also recited, thanks to rare recordings stored or made in Radio Romania’s Sound Archives, by the authors themselves, including George Bacovia, Leonid Dimov, Nina Cassian, Ana Blandiana, Svetlana Cârstean, Adela Greceanu and Elena Vlădăreanu. It was Cristian Marica who had the idea of the album, and who also wrote the foreword for the album, “FiRMA has the ability of to continuously experiment, until the best musical ideas are found. The Selected Poems album includes nine songs on the lyrics of classical and contemporary poets, aimed at giving a signal for the return of music and musicians to Romanian poetry”.



    Cristian Marica: “I had the idea of this album 5 years ago and then I realised the only artists who could bring Romanian poetry to the fore are artists from the underground/alternative zone. However, at the time there was still a very powerful trend that encouraged artists to sing only in English, so when I insisted that this type of music can be done in Romanian I was often met with irony. On the other hand, FiRMA is one of the very few lyrical-dramatic bands that make a kind of music I think is very suitable for the Romanian language. Dulce Romanie (My Sweet Romania), the bonus track on the CD titled Incantations, launched on December 1st, 2017 fully convinced me of that. I listened to the cut, then I spoke to the band members and we started working on the album. So in 2018 we got together, we did a bit of brainstorming and started working.”



    Many of FiRMA’s hits are in English, they were played in heavy rotation on radio and TV stations, and the video for Baby is crying has been included on the playlist of the very popular VH1 Europe music channel. Also, FiRMA was the first Romanian band to have been invited to perform at the MTV European Music Awards Gala in Munich in 2007. It was the first Romanian band to be nominated in the “New Sounds of Europe” category, after in 2004 FiRMA had been nominated for “Best Romanian Act” at the MTV European Music Awards, and for “Best Rock Band” at the MTV Romanian Music Awards a year later. FiRMA have made their last 3 albums in Romanian.



    Daniel Rocca Stoicea: “I like Romanian. I love the language and I find it very generous. And I believe these Romanian words encompass more meanings than English words, for instance. Romanian is a beautiful language which helps you express what you feel. We did indeed sing in English, about a decade ago, but what we had in mind at that time was an album to sell abroad. There are a lot of talented artists that seek to get into the international market, so it is only natural for them to perform in English, but to my mind in Romania one should ideally use the Romanian language. It makes it a lot easier to reach the people here.”



    On January 15th, the National Culture Day, the band FiRMA gave a concert at ARCUB Gabroveni. They played singles and pieces from their latest album, “Selected Poems vol. 1,” released by Casa Radio Publishers, and invited the poets Adela Greceanu, Elena Vladareanu and Svetlana Carstean on stage, to read out the lyrics that inspired the album. Writers Adela Greceanu and Elena Vladareanu spoke about the importance of this fortunate combination of poetry and music.



    Adela Greceanu: “I believe that with this album, the band FiRMA managed to prove that there are contemporary poets in this country, as well as poets who wrote decades ago, who are wonderful people, worth being discovered. I’ve seen the response of those who listened to the album Selected Poems, and I’ve read comments on youtube. Some of the listeners were delighted to discover Leonid Dimov, for example. And the fact that people discovered or rediscovered poetry by means of this album is, in my opinion, extraordinary.”



    Elena Vladareanu: “This is my first experience of this kind, my first time on stage in a rock concert, like a rock star. I am thrilled. Some may say that I am thrilled because I am subjective, given my involvement in the project. But even if I hadn’t been involved, I would have been as delighted about it, because events like this happen very rarely in Romania, and this is something I’ve been saying for at least 15 years, since my debut as a writer and journalist. Such art intersections like the one accomplished by FiRMA today are very rare, these areas seldom come together, writers mind their own business, musicians do their thing, visual artists have their separate ways. And the fact that this project managed to bring together rock music, more specifically the work of a very popular band, FiRMA, and classical and contemporary poetry, Romanian poetry, is precisely why I am so enthusiastic.”


  • Writer Vasile Voiculescu

    Writer Vasile Voiculescu

    Born in November 1884 in Buzau County, writer Vasile Voiculescu, who passed away in April 1963, gained literary recognition due to his religious poetry and fantasy fiction. He was also one of the iconic figures of the anti-communist resistance, being imprisoned for his religious beliefs. A keen literature lover but also a professional medical doctor, Vasile Voiculescu never fully gave up all of his passions. While he made his literary debut in 1916 with the volume “Poetry”, Vasile Voiculescu continued to practice military medicine over 1917-1918 during the Great War. Once peace was restored, he continued to practice medicine, first as a district physician in Bucharest, then within the Crown Property Agency in 1920. All this time he continued to publish poetry as well as theatre plays, making a name for himself amidst the city’s literary circles. Seen by many a religious and traditionalist poet, Voiculescu stunned his contemporary peers by switching to fantasy fiction of folk influence, which was rather a disregarded literary current in Romania at the time.



    Here is historian and literary critic Florentin Popescu talking about this preference: “His prose was a surprise to many people. Writers would gather at Barbu Slatineanu’s place, who was a collector of ceramics and discs. His house was located in the Uranus-Izvor neighborhood, which was later demolished. Many writers did readings there, including Voiculescu, who read his fantastic stories. Many critics were very enthusiastic about his work, although Voiculescu did not realize at first how valuable it really was. He thought it had just been a game turned into stories.”



    The literary value of those fantastic stories were not just a game and, as a result of their appreciation, as of 1930 he started doing the weekly show “Village Time” (Ora satului) on Radio Romania. Then, in 1933 he became a literary advisor at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation and then director of the literary programme, a position that he held until 1945.



    Here is Florentin Popescu again recalling moments from Vasile Voiculescu’s radio activity: “He played a very important role at the Radio. He wrote a feature giving medical advice to people in the countryside; those features were included in a book titled “All Remedies at Hand” published in 1935, actually the first book of homeopathy in Romania. He was happy to support young people. At a certain point, young lady poet Magda Isanos joined him in the studio. She was greatly appreciated later on, but unfortunately, she died very young and Voiculescu deplored her death. Although sometimes he was bored and annoyed by phone calls and ambitious people, he had the ability and diplomacy to accept and air only valuable things.”



    After 1944, Vasile Voiculescu took part in the meetings of a literature circle called “Rugul Aprins” (Burning Pyre). The group was made up of intellectuals and culture figures of strong Christian Orthodox faith, and would convene at the Antim Monastery in Bucharest. Unfortunately, the communist authorities dismantled it and imprisoned its members.



    Vasile Voiculescu was also sent to prison, and his works were banned. Here is Florentin Popescu with more details: “His writings were analysed especially after his death and his rehabilitation, because as everybody knows he was unjustly incarcerated for 4 years. He was 73 when he was imprisoned, and when he got out his body was ravaged. There are some shattering testimonies made by his children, with regard to his state when he came out of prison. It was the year 1958, a bleak period in history, when intellectuals, scientists, officers were thrown behind bars indiscriminately. One of the reasons he was imprisoned had to do with his religious beliefs, but the indictment also made reference to a number of poems in which the communist activists of the time insisted they had identified political undertones indicating that the poet was criticizing the Soviet Union.”



    Released from prison in 1962, Vasile Voiculescu only survived for another year. His well-known poetry volume “The last sonnets of Shakespeare in Imaginary Translation by V. Voiculescu” as well as the phantasy novel “Zahei the Blind” were published posthumously.

  • Ruxandra Cesereanu: poetry as an existential calling

    Ruxandra Cesereanu: poetry as an existential calling


    A well-known poet and prose and essay writer in Romania, Ruxandra Cesereanu recently published a new book of poems entitled “California (on Somes River) at the Charmides publishing house. In a review carried by the Observatorul Cultural magazine, critic Adina Dinitoiu describes the book as “a powerful and well built volume, perhaps the best from Ruxandra Cesereanu so far. Standing apart from the sensorial and sensual poetic imagery we find in her previous work, this new collection of poetry explores for the first time the initiation and ecstatic state of poetry and a conscious intention to affirm the poets trust in poetry. Referring to the title of the book, Cesereanu says the initial title also included the word “hotel, which she gave up at the last minute because it would have restricted the world created by her book, a book about childhood, teenage years, youth and maturity.



    Ruxandra Cesereanu: “This book of poems was not the result of a clearly defined project, but was a process, an alluvial movement that became more definite as it grew. At first I thought I was going to write a 5-page long poem that was to be structured into three layers: a realist visual layer given by the landscape on the bank of the Somes river, a layer given by the faith in poetry and metapoetry and a layer of recollections. I never imaged that it would grow so much, as it was meant to be a very concentrated poem. At some point, however, I realised these different layers were very complex and that they caused a sort of explosion and implosion at the same time, which triggered a landslide. Like in a landslide, things started rolling down, and I alone could halt their movement. My initial title, ‘California Hotel on Somes was inspired by the famous song by the Eagles, and for a five-page poem, it would have been sufficient. However, when the poem grew and multiplied, it was like a river with its own layers, different depths and different courses and I realised that the word ‘hotel with its spatial, albeit poetic, implication, was too restrictive and did not reveal the flow I was experiencing.



    In 2013, Ruxandra Cesereanu bought a bicycle and started making bike trips along the Somer River. One day, as she was on her way home after cycling up and down the river, she heard the sound of a guitar and some distant voices. They came from a group of boys and girls playing Hotel California by the Eagles. Their more or less accurate rendition and their voices reminded Cesereanu of her teenage years when she also used to play the song with her high school and later her university friends, on those very banks of the river or at different parties.



    “This going back in time is what triggered the poem and the whole book made up of one poem with different layers, explains Ruxandra Cesereanu: “Im having a strange experience, strange in a good way, that gives me energy and an added pleasure for life, a kind of ultralife, as I call it. Its clear to me now that this book has a life of its own and will continue to grow. I think the existing layers will engender new layers, especially during my summer holidays when I experience a kind of Proustian process in which the layers of memories or the metapoetic layers are in their most concentrated form. Im sure this book will grow in time, but it will remain a personal experience, because I have no plans to publish the new poems. I have already published a special edition of the book containing 17 extra poems, so everything I write from now on on this subject will be an exclusively personal project.



    “California (on Somes River) has been described by critics as a book about poetry as a vocation and about the existential trust in poetry. In fact, the book contains a series of literary references that are essential to Ruxandra Cesereanus work: “I personally came up in an environment in which poetry had a high aesthetic standard. My father read poetry to me as a teenager. When I was about 17 or 18 he brought me the poetry of the 80s generation, this is how I started reading and commenting poetry, with him, and went on to read with him the great poetry of the world. Somehow, I grew up with the idea that poetry is a pinnacle. But I didnt know back then that poetry would become supreme for me. Of course, today we are trying to avoid pathetic wording, because we live in a society that is somewhat disenchanted and post-postmodernist, which no longer wants to be cantered on archetypes. I, however, am adapted to this postmodernist society, but I hold on to my beliefs of old, which have synthesized since then, because now I am at the age of maturity. Poetry for me, therefore, is a form of redemption, redemption at the vital level. I believe in poetry, I lead a battle for poetry, because for me it is the supreme art, maybe the only type of literature that I can compare with symphonic music. And when I talk about poetry I dont mean versification, but verses in an advanced aesthetic form. Thats what I mean when I say that I am in a battle for poetry. I do believe that in our disenchanted world there are still some solutions for enchanting through storytelling, because the world can be saved through stories, through poetry and the belief in a given poem. I no longer believe that the world can be saved by a poetry of the trivial, but neither can it be saved by a poetry of sentimentalism, of the diaphanously pathetic. There is, however, what I call poetry mixed with meta-poetry, in which belief in literature becomes a way of life.



    Ruxandra Cesereanu has published several volumes in English translation, such as “Schizoid Ocean, a volume of poetry from 1997, a volume of essays called “Political Torture in the 20th century, in 2006, and two more volumes of poetry, “Crusader Woman and “Forgiven Submarine. She has been awarded several pages in the “Whos Who in Contemporary Womens Writing.