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Entries Tagged as 'Literature'

Poetry in Translation (CCXXIV): Orhan VELI KANIK, (1914-1950), ISTANBUL, “Fish in a Bottle of Booze”, “Peşte intr-o sticlă de brandy”

November 18th, 2013 · Comments Off on Poetry in Translation (CCXXIV): Orhan VELI KANIK, (1914-1950), ISTANBUL, “Fish in a Bottle of Booze”, “Peşte intr-o sticlă de brandy” · Books, International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

Cumpăr straie vechi.
Cumpăr haine vechi şi le croiesc in stele.
Muzica este hrana iubirii.
Ador muzica.

Scriu versuri.
Scriu versuri şi cumpăr haine vechi.
Vând haine vechi ca să cumpăr muzică.
O, dac-aş putea, doar, să fiu un peşte intr-o sticlă de brandy …

I buy old clothes.
I buy old clothes and cut them into stars.
Music is the food of love.
I love music.

I write poetry.
I write poetry and buy old clothes.
I sell old clothes and buy music;
If I could also be a fish in a bottle of booze…

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Spanish-Romanian Cultural Complicities (I)

October 30th, 2010 · Comments Off on Spanish-Romanian Cultural Complicities (I) · Books, Diaspora, OPINION, PEOPLE, Translations

Another prominent exile was Alejandro Cioranescu (b Romania 1911 – d. Tenerife 1999) doctor Honoris causa of the University of Tenerife at La Laguna – an expert on the Spanish baroque and on the French-Spanish bibliography his books Estudios de literatura española y comparada (La Laguna, 1954), El barroco o el descubrimiento del drama (La Laguna,1957), Los hispanismos en el francés clásico (Madrid, 1987) and Bibliografía franco-española, 1600-1715 (Madrid 1977) remain to this day standard references in the field.

Amongst the ‘greats’ of universal literature who found exile in Spain was Horia Vintila (1915, Romania – 1992, Spain) who wrote directly in several languages including Spanish in which he published several novels Marta, o la segunda guerra, (Barcelona, 1987), Persecutez Boèce!, (Barcelona, 1983), Un sepulcro en el cielo, (Barcelona, 1987). He was the nominee of the prestigious French literary Prix Goncourt in 1960 which he was compelled to renounce following a character-assassination witch hunt masterminded by the Romanian secret services through the French left-wing press. It is worth noting that the novel in question “Dieu est ne en exil” which was translated in fourteen languages was NOT a political novel and it was inspired by the life of the exiled Roman poet Ovid who died on the Romanian shores of the Black Sea.

Horia Vintila was also a prolific essayist and literary critic in Spanish with titles such as: Presencia del mito, (Madrid, 1956), Poesia y liberdad, (Madrid, 1959), Espana y otras mundos, (Barcelona, 1970), Mestor de novehita, (Madrid, 1972), Introduccion a la mundo peor, (Barcelona, 1978), Literatura y disidencia, (Madrid, 1980), Los deechos humanus, la novsledel sigle XX, (Madrid, 1981). Horia Vintila was professor of Universal Literature at the Official School of Journalism and later founded the Chair of Universal Literature at the Complutense University in Madrid.

During the last two decades an expert of Romanian literature is the former director of the Instituto Cervantes in Bucharest, Joaquin Garrigos Bueno a prolific translator of more than 30 Romanian novels in particular of Mircea Eliade (Boda en el cielo, Diario intimo de la India, Los jovenes barbaros, La noche de San Juan) and Emil Cioran (El ocaso del Pensamiento, El libro de la quimeras, Brevario de los vencidos,) but also of Camil Petrescu, Emil Voiculescu, Liviu Rebreanu and other classics and contemporary writers.

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Romanian Foreign Affairs (I): Rebecca WEST and Antoine BIBESCO

May 1st, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE, quotations

Rebecca West: in Paris, on her way home, she had a brief affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco (who wore black crepe de chine in bed), a Romanian diplomat married to Elizabeth Asquith, daughter of the Liberal leader. She was to remember her own affair as ‘rapturous’ but at its close felt that some blight still affected her personal life. The evidence suggests that Bibesco’s sophisticated sex inventiveness frightened Rebecca and that she interpreted it as a further manifestation of male hostility and aggression and she continued in analysis when she returned to London this time with Silvia Payne another early Freudian. Neverthelsess the elation of her first days with Bibesco coloured the writing of ‘The Strange Necessity’ in which her meditations on art and literature are embedded in an account of a ‘sun guilded autumn day’ wandering through a magically illuminated Paris.

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Poetry in Translation (LXXIII-LXXV): Al. O. Teodoreanu, aka ‘Pastorel’ – “At Stalin’s Death”

February 12th, 2010 · Comments Off on Poetry in Translation (LXXIII-LXXV): Al. O. Teodoreanu, aka ‘Pastorel’ – “At Stalin’s Death” · PEOPLE, Poetry, Translations

At Stalin’s death I cried my eyes out / The secret being truly gritty: / We’ll have instead to go about / Licking the arse of a Committee.

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Mircea Eliade într-o colaborare cu bucluc

February 11th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Diaspora, OPINION, PEOPLE

Desemnat de Sorin Antohi drept “noul Eliade”, Ioan Petru Culianu a reprezentat “un fenomen exploziv introdus în cultura română de după 1989”. Sigur, ar fi contra-productiv să repunem în circulaţie ditirambii prin care s-a realizat această masivă manipulare, care în sine ar fi fost chiar benefică, dacă numele discipolului Culianu n-ar fi fost folosit permanent pentru a-l înlătura din cultura românească pe marele Eliade prin acuzaţii nefondate de anti-semitism. Si, evident, dacă interesul s-ar fi axat exclusiv pe noutatea adusă de psiho-sociologul Culianu (1950-1991) în cele trei cărţi publicate cu ajutorul lui Eliade în Franţa la Payot şi Flamarion, apoi traduse în engleză şi italiană. Dar, mai ales, dacă “fenomenul exploziv” n-ar fi fost declanşat de lansarea unor neadevăruri prin editurile Humanitas, Nemira şi Polirom (urmate inconştient de Editura Academiei), inventându-se doctorate în număr excedentar şi săltându-l pe Culianu în scaunul de conferenţiar de istoria religiilor când n-a apucat să fie decât visiting professor, ba încă imaginându-l (în locul ocupat din 1986 de prof. Wendy Doniger) drept “urmaş al lui Eliade” la vremea când nu-şi trecuse încă doctoratul de Stat…

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Poetry in Translation (LXXII): – Horia VINTILA, “Dedication”

December 17th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Diaspora, PEOPLE, Poetry, Reviews, Translations

DEDICATION (Vintila Horia)
Through streets of Babylon I look confused
For Thee my Lord to come in your pursuit
My voice is hoarse and broken like a lute
Which lost its soul for being over used.

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Nobel prize Winner – Exorting Romania to be honest about its Communist Past

October 8th, 2009 · Comments Off on Nobel prize Winner – Exorting Romania to be honest about its Communist Past · Diaspora, PEOPLE

Herta MUELLER 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature (Romanian-born German from the Banat of Timisoara, living in Berlin) ——————————————————————————————— Herta Müller has a sharp sense of realities, as demonstrated in her article published in Tagesspeil of 17 July 2008, which is echoed by the Frankfurter Rundschau: “It is a scandal that Romania put forward as its […]

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