Books

Entries Tagged as 'Books'

Poetry in Translation (CXXV): Francesc PARCERISAS (b. 1944), Poet Catalan – “Mâna lui Virgiliu” (The Hand of Virgil)

September 23rd, 2012 · Comments Off on Poetry in Translation (CXXV): Francesc PARCERISAS (b. 1944), Poet Catalan – “Mâna lui Virgiliu” (The Hand of Virgil) · Books, International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

Francesc PARCERISAS (n. 1944)
Poet Catalan

Bătălia e grea şi nedreaptă,
flăcări domoale pe culmi de coline.
Suliţele şi săgeţile inamice
ne-au decimat încet
părinţii care ne-au ocrotit, încât, aproape,
fără sa ne dăm seama
ne aflăm muţi şi surprinşi peste măsură,
în toiul focului, pe câmpul de bătălie.

Versiune în limba Română
de Constantin Roman
Londra, 23 Septembrie 2012,
© 2012, Copyright Constantin ROMAN
de Constantin Roman
Londra, 23 Septembrie 2012,
© 2012, Copyright Constantin ROMAN

Mircea Milcovitch receives the French Literary Prize: Prix Contrelittérature 2012

September 10th, 2012 · Comments Off on Mircea Milcovitch receives the French Literary Prize: Prix Contrelittérature 2012 · Books, Diaspora, International Media, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews

Mircea Milcovitch receives the French Literary Prize: Prix Contrelittérature 2012:
« Le colonel Lawrence d’Arabie disait par expérience que tout homme qui appartient réellement à deux cultures perdait son âme » : phrase vertigineuse du Démon de l’absolu d’André Malraux, remontée à ma mémoire, telle une épigraphe fulgurante, après avoir lu Journal d’exil de Mircea Milcovitch.
Je ne parlerai pas concernant cet auteur de talent littéraire car il s’agit de bien plus que cela : d’être, de densité humaine, d’âme et de corps, toutes choses ignorées des plates égobiographies d’aujourd’hui. Journal d’exil montre que la grandeur d’un écrivain, autant que sa prédication même, se trouve dans le lieu d’où il écrit. Le lieu de l’écriture est sa vraie profondeur, il est ce « Lieu seul situé » dont parle le poète Oscar Venceslas de Lubicz Milosz dans Ars Magna, lieu de l’exil qui exige le refus du mensonge et seul contient la mélancolie de l’instant : « moi dans le Lieu seul situé j’écris »
Alain Santacreu

Ceausescu’s “Diplomats” in Britain (Extract from: “Defying the Idiocracy” – Cambridge Memoirs, 1969-1974)

June 29th, 2012 · No Comments · Books, Diary, Diaspora, PEOPLE, quotations, Uncategorized

The burly comrade came banging at the door. There was something terribly Romanian about his banging on my door: an Englishman would have rung once, perhaps twice and after a few moments, seeing that nobody answered he will have left. I had no need to find out who it was, in order not to open the door: the Comrade was banging solidly at my door… I thought:

– This was his visiting card, the physical muscle of the uneducated, the pressing need of the apparatchik, whose mission was, come what may, to bang at my door, regardless, until somebody would respond. He should be so lucky! But what if the door gave in, under his brute force, which he might have applied at Lubyanka? These modern doors were so flimsy…

I never felt so insecure. Still, I had enough courage to tiptoe upstairs and look down from a rooftop terrace, several floors above the door. It was early afternoon and hardly anybody about, who might put him off his rude behaviour:

– Not a very good PR, Comrade, doubtless this was a textbook behaviour aquired in Moscow, with very little currency in the West!
–
Eventually he left:

– God bless him! He gave up on me, for the time being!
–
I waited long enough to make certain he had left. I went straight to the Head Porter and related the story.

– Next time he comes, you should call the police!
– What a good idea! Why haven’t I thought of it?
–
It took time to absorb the new rights to which I was entitled, as a free citizen. It felt like an animal born in captivity, which lived in a cage, for most of its life and now that the cage door was open it did not understand the benefits of Freedom…

Book Launching (France): “Journal d’exil” by Mircea Milcovitch, Éditions Amalthée

January 8th, 2012 · 2 Comments · Books, Diaspora, International Media, PEOPLE, quotations, Reviews

Les “Éditions Amalthée” publieront dans la seconde moitié du mois de février 2012 le “Journal d’Exil”. Ce récit avait été rédigé après l’arrivée en France de l’artiste, entre octobre 1968 jusqu’à la fin de l’année 1969. Le livre est préfacé par le docteur Marc Andronikof.
he Éditions Amalthée publishing house will launch in February 2012 the Memoirs of artist sculptor Mircea Milcovitch (Mircea Milcovici), with a preface by Mark Andronikoff. This book is written by en exile, whose family was no stranger to the sad road of uprooting. Mircea’s father, himself a native of Bessarabia, was compelled to seek refuge in the Kingdom of Romania in the wake of the invasion by the Red Army, at the end of WWII. T
Whilst reading an early draft of this Memoir, one encounters a certain melancholy, imbued by generations of displaced ancestors, living at the confluence of warring empires. But beyond this one can detect a strong determination to live the newly-found freedom and to succeed in the artistic career.

Le rayonnement de la culture Roumaine en France (par Constantin ROMAN, Londres)

September 21st, 2011 · 3 Comments · Books, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

Le rayonnement de la culture Roumaine en France

(Plaidoyer pour la traduction en Français de l’Anthologie “Blouse Roumaine” par Constantin ROMAN)

Inspirée de la toile homonyme de Henri Matisse, oeuvre exposée au Musée d’Art Moderne du Centre Pompidou à Paris, “La Blouse Roumaine” est une anthologie des Femmes de Roumanie, présentant des personnalités incontournables de la culture universelle. Cet ouvrage contient une majorité des femmes francophones – des femmes qui se sont exprimées à un moment ou un autre dans cette langue, ont écrit ou écrivent en Français, ont vécu en France ou bien y vivent actuellement, contribuant à la culture française comme professeurs, écrivains, peintres, sculpteurs, psychologues, philosophes, médecins, analystes politiques, poètes, actrices de cinéma ou de théâtre (sociétaires de la Comédie française), des femmes qui ont tenu des salons littéraires à Paris, les égéries qui ont inspiré les artistes Rodin, Brancusi, Renoir, Vuillard, Matisse, Fantin Latour, les compositeurs Chausson, Poulenc, Gounod, Fauré ou Saint Saens et Ysaÿe, des écrivains comme Proust, Colette, Cocteau, Morand ou Anatole France et Sacha Guitry, des cinéastes comme Jean Renoir, Marc Allegret, Christian Jacques, Jean Boyer, ou Pierre Colombier et Claude Autant-Lara, des pianistes et violonistes, des chanteuses d’opéra, des ballerines, enfin, des Françaises qui ont épousé des Roumains ou la cause de la Roumanie et qui ont eu par la suite une contribution à l’histoire culturelle et politique de ce pays, des conseillères politiques, ou des Roumaines naturalisées françaises ou des Françaises d’origine Roumaine.

Patrick McGuinness’ first novel on Ceausescu’s Romania – on the Booker Prize Longlist for 1911

August 30th, 2011 · Comments Off on Patrick McGuinness’ first novel on Ceausescu’s Romania – on the Booker Prize Longlist for 1911 · Books, International Media, PEOPLE, quotations, Reviews

It takes an Irishman, like Patrick McGuinness, to write a fiction book on Romania, which is certainly one of the best on this subject to come out in the last one hundred years.
It is superbly crafted, gripping, witty and full of unexpected twists and turns as would befit the dark days of Ceausescu’s terminal dictatorship. The author’s acid style may not be one to be enjoyed by humourless Romanians, who, in spite of the last two decades of “freedom” remain shackled to the old mentality of the fallen dictator: it nevertheless caught the attention of the Booker Prize Jury which shortlisted it for the prize to be given later in 2011.

Ceausescu’s fall is not unlike the recent stories of other fallen dictators and the paranoia they imposed on their subjects yet the current political scene in the Middle East and North Africa makes this theme so much more compelling.
Despite the real pain and memories of suffering which this narrative brings to people cowered by fallen dictators, Patrick McG’s story deserves the highest accolade.
Watch out this space!

Constantin ROMAN – Dérive continentale ou européen en dérive

July 27th, 2011 · Comments Off on Constantin ROMAN – Dérive continentale ou européen en dérive · Books, Diary, Diaspora, International Media, PEOPLE, Reviews

Voici une lecture aussi passionnante que captivante, bien qu’elle ne soit pas, comme le suggère son titre, un récit scientifique*/. Son auteur, un dissident Roumain ayant fait ses études de géophysique à Bucarest pendant les années folles du régime immonde de Ceausescu, est quand même parvenu a s’en échapper, afin de participer à une conférence à l’Université de Newcastle, en Grande Bretagne. N’étant plus retourné en Roumanie qu’après la chute du régime communiste, il est resté néanmoins un patriote Roumain, actuellement Professeur honoris causa de l’Université de Bucarest, tout en gardant sa résidence, près de Glyndebourne, dans une partie “chic” de l’Angleterre. Selon son propre récit, Constantin Roman doit être l’un des jeunes cientifiques recevant l’un des meilleurs honoraires du monde . Une fois arrivé en Angleterre, muni seulement d’un billet de £5 dans sa poche, il a utilisé son expertise, son charme, les meilleurs contacts ainsi que l’appui de l”unversité de Newcastle

Keith RUNCORN, invited Constantin ROMAN to a NATO Conference on Palaeomagnetism

comme plateforme de lancement. En parvenant à entretenir les meilleurs contacts, notamment avec le Professeur Keith Runcorn, de la Royal Society, il parvint à obtenir une bourse de recherches au Collège de Peterhouse, à Cambridge. Cela lui a permis de faire sa thèse de doctorat sur la tectonique des Carpathes et de l’Asie centrale, en étudiant des données sismiques afin d’identifier les limites et le mouvement des plaques lithosphériques. Dans ce contexte, utilisant les zones de compression et d’extension, il a défini l’existence de deux plaques lithosphériques non-rigides, les “plaques tampon”, ou “buffer plates”, du Tibet et du Sinkiang, cantonnées respectivement entre les plaques lithosphériques rigides de l”Inde et de l’Eurasie. Au début des années 70 une pareille suggestion aurait été étiquetée pour le moins comme iconoclaste. Une fois son doctorat obtenu, sous la direction du professeur Sir Edward Bullard, Roman est devenu par la suite Conseiller International de l’industrie petrolière, ayant gagné, je suppose, des honoraires prodigieux. Cet ouvrage traite essentiellement, de la folie des dictatures et des bureaucraties mais aussi de la douce vie de doctorant-chercheur a Cambridge. Quand aux détails de la bureaucratie “kafkaiesque”, les autorités britanniques semblent aussi obstinées que leurs consoeurs roumaines

Comrade Jonathan Swift’s “subversive” Gulliver and the “Genius of the Carpathians”

June 3rd, 2011 · Comments Off on Comrade Jonathan Swift’s “subversive” Gulliver and the “Genius of the Carpathians” · Books, International Media, PEOPLE, quotations

“Publishing Swift’s satires in 1985, I myself fought a lot with the censor in order to include “A Modest proposal” concerning eating Irish children, which had become subversive here on account of meat shortage in Romania. Faced with the alternative of not publishing the book at all, or doing it without the famous text, I gave it up. The supreme level of censorship was a department of the (Communist) Party Central Committee.”
source of quotation:
http://www.blouseroumaine.com

Carmen Sylva, Elena Vacarescu and the British Composer Sir Hubert Parry

May 28th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Art Exhibitions, Books, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Reviews, Translations

This beautiful Queen Anne house @ nr 17 Kensington Square has the largest staircase in the square. Kensington Square, 17, was the home of Hubert Parry. His eldest daughter inherited the house in 1932. She was married to Lord Ponsonby, leader of the Labour opposition in the House of Lords. In 1936 Lord Ponsonby produced a detailed and well-researched history of Kensington Square.

A prolific musician, composer and from 1885 Director of the Royal Academy of Music who nursed a whole generation of British composers, Hubert Parry is much forgotten today except for his piece sang by riotous crowds at the last night of the Proms set on Blake’s poem “Jerusalem”. He composed chamber music, oratorios and symphonies.
On a more exotic note he set to music “The Soldier’s Tent” a poem by Carmen Sylva, Queen of Romania and Helene Vacaresco, which at the time of the Boer War was greatly en vogue raising the spirits of the British public at home.

The Soldier’s Tent
The Queen of Romania wrote the poem “The Soldier’s tent” put to music by Sir Herbert Parry – a song popular during the Boer War

Conversation with Domnica Radulescu, Romanian-American Academic and Novelist about her first Novel – “Train to Trieste”

May 2nd, 2011 · 3 Comments · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE

CRS:
Most of Romanian exiles who became acknowledged as international greats, Cioran, Anna de Noailles, Marta Bibescu, Horia Vintila wrote directly in the language of their adoptive country, yet the native Romanian officials together with a raft of native critics considered this practice disloyal. The young Elena Vacarescu who received a prestigious French Prize for her poems.she was reviled, back in Romania, even before 1900. She returned only to be exiled again, yet she desperately loved her country wherever she was. Two generations later, under communism, the official critic George Calinescu in his opus on the History of Romanian literature dismissed Anna de Noailles as “unpatriotic” for not writing in Romanian. Even as recently as two years ago a director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris refused a Romanian author financial help for the translation of his book simply because this was written in a foreign language therefore stating that it did not qualify as Romanian (sic). We know that this seems bizarre and nonsensensical. Your choice of writing in English is clear and I for one I think it a great help in putting `Romania on the map, very much as Panait Istrati or Anna de Noailles did it before the war and many other exiles since – what are your views on such criticism? Do you find it justified?

DR:
I frankly don’t care much about such criticism nor do I pay much attention to it. I think a writer can write in any language under the sun she/he chooses and throughout history writers wrote in different languages, not always their first native or maternal languages. I left Romania for the United States in order to start a new life, a new me, a new destiny, when I was quite young. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to write in the language of the country in which I have been living for a quarter of a century. Besides I adore writing in English more than in any other language.

CRS:
On the occasion of the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Herta Muller much debate and controversy was stirred in the Romanian society about the Romanianness of a German ethnic born in Romania, who lived in Berlin and wrote in a foreign language… Some critics went even further as to suggest that one of the reasons why Romania may have been overlooked by the Nobel prize committee is the paucity of Romanian novels translated in languages of international circulation: do you find such suggestion justified?

DR:
I don’t know, again I don’t care much about such issues as someone’s “Romanianness” or “Frenchness,” and I think it’s silly of critics and the media to worry about things like that; the reason they do is because there is such a need to pin and label writers and place them in boxes of ethnic, national, linguistic affiliations. Maybe Romanians should do a better job at translating their own literature in other languages.

Centre for Romanian Studies