Centre for Romanian Studies

PATRICK
Hector McDONNELL (b. 1947, N. Belfast, Ulster)

 Patrick, cine eşti Tu?

Te căutam prin versuri latineşti,
Bezmetici, prin noianul de neştiri…

Cuvintele- ţi ne scapă printre mâini,
Iar leagănul nu-ţi este nicăieri.
Erai in Mayo, sau in Slemish Hill?
Şi ce uriaşi te-au strâns la pieptul lor?

Aiurea,
L-ai strigat pe Dumnezeu,
Ce-a coborât adânc, în trupul tău,
Să-ti dea curaj să-nvingi la drumuri noi.

Care-a fost împăratul
Ce te-a-njosit? Unde-ai plecat?
Te căutăm, dar încă nu te ştim…
Străjerii tăi se uită-n vârf de munţi şi-aşteaptă
Pasul tău.

Versiune în limba Română de Constantin ROMAN, Londra,

© 2006, Copyright Constantin ROMAN, London

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BIO NOTE:

Hector McDonnell is one of the finest figurative Irish artists of his generation. Best known for his observations of daily life he captures the mundane and ordinary with an extraordinary quality.

Cruce Irlandeza contemporana cu Sf. Patrick

Born in West Belfast in March 1947, Hector studied at the Munich Art Academy and later moved to Vienna where he spent a year working in a studio of the sculptor and architect Fritz Wotruba (1907-1975). Following the continental experience, about 1967 McDonnell entered Christ Church, Oxford College to study history. On graduating from Oxford, he began to exhibit his paintings regularly in London. Self-confessedly, Hector McDonnell is a loner, a maverick, an unbranded steer. As a completely figurative painter in the early 1970s he was out on a limb. The fashionable contemporary art at that time was abstract, pop or conceptual. His output is prolific. He produces a large quantity of oil paintings, both very large and very small, using dashing thick square brushstrokes, and presumably painted very quickly. His specialty is interiors, usually with a lot of floor in the foreground. These are often pub and cafe interiors, but more particularly shops, especially butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers. He also regularly produces small sets of etchings on the same subject. McDonnell allows himself to be seduced by what he sees: events startle him into perceiving what he calls the ‘magical’ in everyday situations. In his painting each object is imagined with the stout atmospheric density he.

(Biography Note after: “The Night Before Larry was Stretched“)

“http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=17799548441&searchurl=sortby%3D17%26an%3Dhector%2Bmcdonnell%2Billustrator

Constantin ROMAN, author of the Romanian version of this poem, is a member of the “Society of Authors”, London