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“Continental Drift – Colliding Continents, Converging Cultures” – Constantin Roman

February 19th, 2003 · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE

IOP Publishers (Bristol & Philadelphia) 2000. pp. 211 – ISBN 0-7503-0686-6

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Constantin Roman is Romanian Honorary consul in the English university town of Cambridge where he was awarded a PhD for pioneering work in the field of geophysics in 1974. For over twenty years, he has been an independent consultant in oil exploration and his reputation as a successful oil finder has enabled him to settle down comfortably in a pleasant corner of England after many vicissitudes.

Dr Roman’s memoirs were published in 2000 by an Anglo-American scientific publisher. The title, Continental Drift suggests that plate tectonics, his field of expertise, dominates the book. In fact while frequent attention is given to his scientific ideas, how they were applied, and the collaboration with eminent scientists which resulted, the fascination of this book is to be found in its account of how the human spirit managed to triumph over considerable odds.

Roman is a determined and ingenious Romanian with a gift for striking up friendships with the eminent and the humble and also a genius for improvisation which has extricated him from tight corners. Such survival skills, when not leavened by strong moral qualities, have produced a rather sinuous Romanian, immortalised by the playwright Caragiale, and much seen in the politics of the country for the past seventy years. Roman’s ability to triumph against the odds and make a new life for himself in a land very different from the one he left, while retaining a strong moral formation and a desire never to lose touch with Romania, is a gripping and inspiring tale.

Roman describes ‘the DNA signature’ provided by his ancestors who regularly found themselves on the wrong side of authority for religious and later political reasons.

The stratagems needed to overcome a Kafkaesque bureaucracy and obtain a passport, permission to leave the country, and a plane ticket in order to take up an invitation to attend a palaeomagnetic conference at Newcastle university, make absorbing reading. Human agency could still defeat the most opaque of bureaucracies. The Latin temperament of the Romanians may explain why Nicolae Ceausescu, the peasant shoemaker who acquired the reins of power in 1965, was determined to impose a brand of national Stalinism, in which all traces of nonconformity were erased.

Imagining what might have occurred to a free spirit like Roman if entombed in Ceausescu’s Orwellian system is a depressing thought. It is worse to contemplate that there were probably many other outspoken young Romanians who in nearly every case were crushed under the iron heel , broken or compromised by the system.

In the most entertaining part of the book, Roman describes how, as a young ingénue, he arrived on the shores of England, describing his reactions to the social customs, eating habits, and landscapes and buildings of this curious island.

Rueful accounts are provided of British insularity and bureaucratic rigidity, which qualify his enthusiasm, for English ways. But he became sufficiently attached to Britain to make his home there even though he was determined not to renounce his Romanian nationality.

His greatest trouble arose from his refusal to give up his Romanian nationality. He was menaced on a number of fronts: by Securitate operatives masquerading as diplomats keen to end his flouting of socialist order and drag him back to Romania; by a prospective mother-in-law who refused to allow her daughter to marry him unless he accepted British citizenship; and by officials of the British Home Office who assumed that his desire to retain what he saw as his unalienable right of birth, his nationality, might stem from communist loyalties.

Afterwards Goodman decided to champion Roman’s cause, writing to the head of the Home Office that ‘He is a man of impeccable character and he is clearly determined to belong here and make a significant contribution to our national life’.

Upon graduation, Roman set up his own oil consultancy business when a slump in the industry meant there were few job openings. He believed he made a success of it because of ‘the convergence of two most improbable spirits the obduracy, imagination and resourcefulness of the Romanian character, grafted on the liberalism, precision and luminosity of a Cambridge mind’

Constantin Roman writes with candour, wit, and humility. His remarkable life story unfolds with effortless simplicity thanks to his ability to write mellifluous English influenced by Romanian cadences.

This is a book which should interest the Romanian public at home and abroad as well as the general public- academic and non-academic.

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Review:
Thomas Gallagher (Bradford University)
t.g.gallagher AT bradford.ac.uk
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http://www.constantinroman.com/continentaldrift/

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King Carol II’s remains are returned to Romania

February 19th, 2003 · Diary, Diaspora, PEOPLE

After his demise in exile, fifty years ago…
King Carol II’s remains are returned to Romania
from the crypt of his Braganza ancestors in Lisbon:

King_Carol_II_of_Romania On 14th February 2003 the great grandson of Queen Victoria was buried in the sanctuary of the Romanian monarchs in an ancient monastery in the Carpathians

Romanians do like a good Funeral (and a good Wake) But what is President Iliescu’s Government up to? What are the political implications for the Romanian Monarchy? And what had happened to Madam Lupescu?

King Carol II, son of King Ferdinand I and of Queen Marie of Romania, Princess of Great Britain, was the first modern monarch to be born in the land in 1893. This is not exactly what he is remembered for, but rather for the doggerel which will haunt the late king to his new grave at the 16th century monastery of Curtea de Argesh, in the Carpathians:

Have you heard of Madam Lupescu,
Who came to Romania’s rescue’
It’s a wonderful thing,
To be under a King:
Is Democracy better, I ask you?

Carol II ruled Romania for ten years between 1930 and 1940, having previously renounced the throne for Madam Lupescu. He eventually changed his mind and made a dramatic return to become king, a period of history fraught with difficulties, as three of the country’s ministers were assassinated. Carol knew that he was himself a target of the Iron Guard, supported by Hitler.

But is spite of all the turmoil, Romanians will associate Carol’s reign with a period of economic achievement and strides towards modernity. There is much to be said for what Carol had done to strengthen the new structure of Romania’s Institutions as he did to encourage industry, education and the arts. This he succeeded against all odds as he had to fight on the diplomatic front against Stalin and Hitler alike and at home against the fascist Iron Guard. Even after his abdication , in 1940, Carol was a virtual prisoner in Franco’s Spain, before he managed to steal across the border illegally and settle in Portugal, where he eventually died to be buried in the chapel of his Braganza ancestors, in the ancient monastery of Sao Vicente da Fora.

50 years after his death Carol’s remains were at the centre of some political horse trade between the Government of Romania and the Romanian Royal family. Carol’s body and that of his erstwhile mistress (later to become his third wife) Madam Lupescu were brought back from Portugal to be buried in an ancient monastery of the Carpathians, on 14th February 2003. A new chapel of rest, decorated with frescos and with the royal coat of arms had been restored care of the Romanian Government. Calinic Bishop of Argesh had officiated, King Michael has been represented by Princess Margarita and her consort and the Government was represented by the Minister of Culture. Equally present were Portuguese Government officials and that of the Braganza Royal family. The Romanian Government had seen that pomp and military honours, due to a former head of State had been observed. Maybe the Greek Government, which behaved so churlishly towards its Royal family could take a page from President Ilescu’s book…

There is no wonder that the communist and post-communist governments alike found it politically attractive to indulge in the practice of re-burials of scores of notable Romanians who died in exile and whose earthly remains were going to be ‘reunited’ with their homeland. Why go through all this expense, when the average monthly wage of the common denizen in Romania is still only 80 dollars and falling? Well, one may well ask: it is all part of the current Romanian Government’s wider PR strategy to demonstrate to the world its democratic credentials, before it enters NATO and the EU. Because, as a Romanian saying goes,

de morti sa vorbesti numai de bine,

which in Saxon speak loosely translates as: “only speak well of the dead”, implying that “all dead men are good men”. President Iliescu knows that too well: after all he saw that Ceausescu himself was put down in December 1989. Now the President is busy adopting the former ‘errant sons and daughters’ of the Romanian Diaspora. This disguised hijacking of history (after all history is the property of the government of the day) is all window-dressing for the outside world, because for decades Romanian history had been fudged and now it is being rewritten under the guise of reconciliation.

This is the best time when a funeral speech by a politician could score effectively a political point with the electorate – everybody will be listening to it, for the dead cannot turn yet in its grave, where it is soon to be conveyed, before the next political reburial takes place.

It is ironic that fifty years after his demise at his exile retreat in Estoril Carol’s remains could still be a political bone of contention. With the presence of the former king Michael (Carol’s son by Helen of Greece and Denmark, unconstitutionally deposed under duress by the Communists in December 1947) getting ever more pressing in Romania, it became clear that something had to be done to derail the monarchists’s hopes for a possible restoration, of a kind that was made in Spain.

In this context it apparent that in spite of all expectations, Carol’s reburial in the crypt of the Romanian kings at Curtea de Argesh, on the 50th commemoration of his death could be useful for the Government of president Iliescu.

eurasiatrip2007.1185064380.09x-tomb-of-king-carol-ii

How? Quite simply, King Michael, now 81, would wish to keep the ceremony low key, and sober. as indeed he did not attend his estranged father’s funeral in Portugal, in 1953. Consistently he had neither attended the ceremony at Curtea de Argesh, but he had seen that he was represented by his daughter instead. In a wider context one must not forget that king Michael, had filed in the Romanian Courts official claims for the restitution of his family’s private possessions, amongst which is the Royal castle at Sinaia, built by Carol I with Hohenzollern family funds in the late 19th century. This is a thorn in flesh of President Iliescu’s Socialist government and one which it has interest to placate by encouraging new claimants in the person of Paul Lambrino. As all of a sudden, Carol II body was officially brought back and given a state funeral European royalty had stayed away or had been represented at a minor level. However who kept a high profile at the funeral was the new “pretender”, Paul Lambrino, an antique dealer from London and Carol’s natural grandson, by his first wife, who had just been declared a “Hohenzollern” by a Romanian Court. It is a known fact that Carol’s morganatic marriage to Zizi Lambrino, in 1918, was annulled in 1919, before she gave birth, in 1920, to a male “heir” by the name of Carol Mircea Lambrino. Paul is Carol Mircea’s son. The fact that a republic’s Court of Law and that of a provincial district, in a country rife with legal edicts of a kind that are regularly overturned at Strasbourg international Court of Human Rights, would decide who is and who is not a prince of royal blood could seem somewhat quixotic if not outright risible, by any standards. Not so in today’s Romania, where, as Cioran put it so well, “tout est possible et rien ne m’etonne plus”. Little wonder that Paul Lambrino, son of Carol Mircea Lambrino had been recognised in 2002 in Romania as lawful grandson of the late King Carol II and therefore rightful heir to the throne of Romania, whenever that may become available and inter-allia to King Carol’s estate. His claim is currently pitched at 62% of the Royal estate. In the meantime Paul Lambrino is now encouraged by the neo-communist republican press (Adevarul) by being styled as “Prince Paul of Romania” and his wife (an American divorcee and a commoner) is also called “Princess Lia”. The British press, from time to time had been exercised by “Princess Lia’s” exploits and we shall not dwell upon such unfortunate circumstances. But more importantly, with this reburial, a new saga is likely to unfold before our eyes with respect to Michael’s claims to his family’s rights.

After Carol’s death, in 1953, Madam Lupescu’s own inheritance abroad was in dispute between King Michael and his natural half-brother Carol Mircea Lambrino, for a good nine years between 1953 and 1962, but nothing came of it. Later on, Ceausescu himself also attempted and failed, after Lupescu’s death, in 1977, in laying his hands on Carol’s Portuguese estate, by claiming it on behalf of a Jewish relative, which the late Lupescu still had in Romania. Well, this may be an extra trump card in President Iliescu’s sleeve. If he really wanted to offend the king, he could have insisted that the Lupescu be also buried next to her late husband in the cathedral church of Curtea de Argesh. Still a last-minute compromise was found in Bucharest whereby the remains of Lupescu were laid to rest in the monastery’s cemetery. There is little doubt that, given Madam Lupescu’s romantic talents as a society hostess, the venerable orthodox monks will have great fun in such company. Poor “princess” Lupescu, the woman Romanians love to hate, she would never be able to stop making waves, even some 26 years after her death, into the 21st century. If she knew what was all about, she would love it, for it is singularly true to her form and oecumenically confusing to the end.

This confusion had of late gained an extra dimension, as a Rabbinical Court in Israel had just declared that Carol and Lupescu had in fact had a daughter, which nobody knew about and which would have been sent for adoption and brought up in the Jewish faith. Now the descendants of this putative if unexpected branch from the union of a Romanian Orthodox to a Jewish lady converted to Roman Catholicism had popped up as respected citizens of Israel and potential claimants to Carol’s and Lupescu’s estates in Romania. It is no doubt that the DNA experts will become busier than ever in Bucharest, but in the meantime who said that Romania was not an inclusive society? President Iliescu may be the last person to dispute this impression and the EU should take heed.

For more information about Romanian Royals and about Carol II 3rd wife and entourage, read:

“Blouse Roumaine – The Unsug Voices of Romanian Women”:

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

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Anita Nandris-Cudla (1904–1984)

February 19th, 2003 · Books, PEOPLE, Reviews

[b]Bucovina 1920’s Match-making:[/b]
“So it was decided that I should marry the young man from our village. My father was was not all satisfied. When the engagement was announced, the bridegroom sent, as was the custom, two men called match-makers. When the marriage was decided, the parents of the bride put out some wine and biscuits and invited the parents of the bridegroom. They entered the house with other guests, but the bridegroom remained somewhere in the garden. The parents of both bride and bridegroom discussed the situation, everyone else acted as witnesses. They announced what dowey would be give, They were obliged to be precise about this. There had been cases where the offers had been exaggerated; there had been cases of boasting to give so many cows, sheep or goats or so much land. Sometimes they did not keep their word. If this happened or if the witnesses were able to contradict them, then the bride and groom were obliged to produce all that had been promised. Thus my parents too found themselves in the same position. The father of the bridegroom spoke first. He said that he could not promise a large dowry as it was just the end of the First World War of 1914 and that he and three sons, that is the bridegroom and his two brothers, and so three people were not at home to carry on their household affairs. Men were called up to the age of fifty and youths from eighteen. The war had lasted four years, so anyone could imagine how many cattle horses and carts – i.e. the whole household – were destroyed when they returned healthy from the war and found nothing.”

(“Twenty years in Siberia”, Ed Culturala Romana, Bucharest, 1998)

[b]Dowry:[/b]
“Then my father began to speak. As I said, he was not too satisfied. He would give a cow, and her calf, about four sheep and as far as land was concerned, he could give more as he had plenty, but he would not do so. E would give two hectars to the bridegroom and the same to the bride and they would see how they would get on with this amount of land. The maqtchmakers went off. One brought the bridegroom into the house, the other brought the bride and as was the custom they shook hands. Then everyone came to the table and drank to the future and arranged a date for the wedding…”

(“Twenty years in Siberia”, Ed Culturala Romana, Bucharest, 1998)

[b]A woman’s Gulag:[/b]
“So much misery and suffering I had never had before as I have had now. Can anyone imagine how – in a winter with 40 degrees below zero – could a woman have made a journey of 80 kilometres on a reindeer sledge through pathless snow-drifts, through forests, through wilderness? In the night I could see nothing but the whiteness of the snow. I hung on with great fear and attention to the “narta” for it was small and if they had tripped suddenly, I could easily have been thrown out to be abandoned in a snow-drift where I would never have been found.”

(“Twenty years in Siberia”, p.112, Ed Culturala Romana, Bucharest, 1998)

[b]Woman’s Hunger:[/b]
“But I was becoming very exhausted and could hardly drag one foot after the other. We quelled our hunger the best we could, but our bodies had not one of the necessary vitamins, for several years had passed sincesince we had seen vegetables or fresh fruit. If some dried products were produced, like dried onions, garlic, potatos, we workers did not get any, it all went to the ‘nacialnici’ – i.e. the Russians. So people began to be ill. To begin with, some red patches appeared on the feet, we were so sleepy that we fell asleep on our feet. Then our gums began to swell and to turn black, our teeth rattled like pearls and the hair on our heads began to fall out. We realized that the situation was serious and that we could not help it. The other people who came here about seven years before us said to us: ‘go out to the tundra and gather mulberries and eat as many as you can, because that is the only way to cure that illness’”.

(“Twenty years in Siberia”, p.98-99, Ed Culturala Romana, Bucharest, 1998)

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[b]Profile:[/b]

Anita Nandris-Cudla wsa a Romanian peasant-farmer from Bucovina, a historical province which for centuries was coveted by neighbouring empires: the Ottomans the Habsburgs and not in the least the Russians with their heir – the Soviet empire. Anita came from a typical farmer family and her education was limited to only a few primary classes, which allowed her to read and write, whilst her brothers were schooled to become medical doctors and academics.

As a result of the Stalin-Hitler pact, the Russians occupied Bucovina for twelve months, in 1941, before they were driven out by the Romanian armies. During this occupation from Bukovina alone some 41,000 people were deported to slave labour camps, in Siberia, in a spate of Bolshevic hatred. As part of this policy, in July 1941 Anita had been comandeered by the occupying Soviet troops together with her young children and sent in a cattle train wagon to Siberia.. Her husband was never to return. On the way out Anita scribbled a message on a handkerchief, put it in a bottle and threw it from the train, as it passed her home village for her friends and relatives to know of the family’s fate. Twenty years on and as many years of endurance, on her return to her native village which was now part of the Soviet Union Anita had written a heart-rending memoir in the simplest vernacular language which makes the fresco of human suffering deeply poignant. Anita’s narrative describes the deportations from Romania during the period of 1939 – 1945 and the political persecutions endured for twenty years in the Siberian prison camps.
One may well ask what is so special about Anita’s book when so many similar accounts starting with Sozhenetsyn’s had already “covered” the subject? The greta difference and perhaps strength of this memoir is that its author was an ethnic subject deported into a foreign country and one who came from an uneducated rural environment – the peasant stock. By contrast, all the other gulag stories reflect the plight, of the intelligentsia. It is a real miracle that such story was written at all and had been saved to be able to see the print: it had to wait another two decades for Communism to collapse before it could be published.

This memoir was translated in English by Mabel Nandris, (q.v.) her sister-in- law and the Irish-born wife of Anita’s brother the Byzantinologist Grigore Nandris, Professor at London University.

Anita Nandris’ tragic account could be published in Romania, only after Ceausescu’s was put down: communists were not keen to publice Stalin’s atrocities. The Romanian manuscript was printed in 1991 and its English translation seven years later.

There are, of course, several books published on the Soviet Goulag, the most famous of them being that of the Nobel-Prize laureate Aleksander Sozhenitzyn. But his and others testimonials reflect the perspective of intellectual deportees survivors of those camps and is usually presented from a Russian point of view. By contrast, Anita’s account stands out amongst them as the simple voice of the uneducated woman from an ethnic minority, the “salt of the earth’ whose strength of character was derived from strong moral and family values. It is people like her and her folk that make the backbone of the Romanian nation: the simplicity of Anita’s language stands out as an example of the peasant’s nobility and dignity in the face of naked aggression. It is an example to be remembered.

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[b]Biobliography:[/b]

Nandris-Cudla, Anita, “20 de ani in Siberia : Destin bucovinean”, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1991

Nandris-Cudla, Anita, “Twenty years in Siberia” , translated by Mabel Nandris, Ed Culturala Romana, Bucharest, 1998

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[b]Note:[/b]

This Profile is an extract from the Anthology of Romanian Women:

“Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

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Poetry in Translation (X): Gabriela Melinescu – “Birth of Constellations”

February 18th, 2003 · Books, PEOPLE, Poetry, Translations

“Others are born here on Earth,
In a fresh scent of salt and milk.
The buds burst out biting the twigs
With the silky movement of the serpent.

O, would my birth
Be repeated again?
With dilated pupils, o, breeze of pain,
With white clouds will you pass over my face?

Would you, one evening, leave me again
Like a translucent bone on the hot sands
And fretting on the sky’s pavement, Mater,
Would you ever remember our love?”

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Note:
Gabriela Melinescu (b.1942), Poet, Exile
(“Ivirea stelelor”) (“The Birth of Constellations”)
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Translated from Romanian by:
Constantin ROMAN
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For more information about Gabriela Melinescu, see:

“Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women” – an Anthology

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

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Poetry in Translation (IX): Hélène Vacaresco – “Romania”

February 18th, 2003 · Diaspora, PEOPLE, quotations

“My voice comes from faraway, therefore it is faint and also, because it is a woman’s voice, it is trembling of the emotion imposed by your presence, as much as of the honour of being listen to. My voice comes from faraway, but it hopes when you will listen to it that it will resound in your hearts.

My voice comes from the midst of this nation, which having been placed on the threshold of Europe, will have loved and admired France and like France, and often through it, she would have strived for freedom, vowed to have accomplished a splendid destiny and face bravely the changing mood of Fortune.

You may well recognise in these qualities Romania, land of suffering, land of enlightenment and of valour placed across the promontory against the dredge of Asian invasions and like a beacon being mightily conscious of defending the civilization which gave it its people and its laws”.

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Note:
Hélène Vacaresco (1866, Bucharest-Paris,1947),
Poet, Diplomat – addressing the Societe des Nations, Paris, 27th April 1925
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Translated from Romanian by:
Constantin Roman.

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

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Poetry in Translation (VIII): Ana Blandiana – “Morning Elegy”

February 18th, 2003 · Poetry, Translations

At the beginning I promised to say nothing,
But later, in the morning
I saw you coming past the gates with bags of ashes
Scattering them as if one was sowing wheat.
As I could no longer contain myself, I shouted: What are you doing? What are you doing?
It is for you that I had snowed all over town, the whole night,
It is for you that I had blanched everything, the whole night, O if
You only could understand how difficult it is to snow!
Last night, you were hardly asleep, as I flew into space
It was dark and cold out there. I had to
Fly all the way to that single point where
The vacuum makes the suns spin and it snuffles them out,
And as I was still throbbing for a while in this corner
So that I could return and snow over you
The smallest snowflake I had to watch, weigh, approve,
Mature, make it glisten by looking at it,
And now I am feeling sleepy and exhausted and am feverish.
As I am watching you spreading the dust of that extinguished fire
Over my immaculately white work, I am smiling telling you:
Much higher snowdrifts will come after me
And they will cover you with all the white in the world.
Do try to understand, from the very beginning, this law,
Gigantic snowdrifts will come after us
And you will run out of ashes.
And even the smallest babies will learn how to snow
And the white will cover your poor attempts of denying it.
And planet Earth will enter the whirl of planets
Like a star glistening with snow.

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Note:
Ana Blandiana (b. 1942) Poet, Dissident
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Translated from the Romanian by:
Constantin Roman.
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Poetry in Translation (II – VII): Marin Sorescu – “Ladder To Heaven” and five other poems

February 18th, 2003 · Poetry, Translations

LADDER TO HEAVEN
by Marin SORESCU, translated by Constantin ROMAN

A silk thread spun by a spider
Is hanging from the ceiling
Just above my bed.

Every day I notice it
Descending lower.
Now I am even offered
The ladder to Heaven – I say

It comes from ‘up there’.

Although I had lost weight to the point
Where I am only the spectre of my former self
I believe that my body
May be too heavy
For this delicate ladder.

You, soul of mine, I think that you ought to go first.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter!.

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Note:
“Scara La Cer” was the last poem written by
Marin Sorescu before he died in 1996
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Translated from the Romanian by:
Constantin Roman.
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Maris SORESCU (1936-1996)

(Short Biography note from “Transcript” (7) Romania) and from Wikipedia
http://www.transcript-review.org/section.cfm?id=132&lan=en
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_Sorescu

Marin SORESCU (1936, Bulze?ti, Dolj – 1997, Bucharest) was a Romanian poet, playwright, and novelist) certainly one of the most popular and better-known poets and perhaps one of the most translated Romanian writer of the latter half of the 20th century. More than a dozen books of his poetry and plays have appeared in English (see below), mainly in the U.K. and in Ireland. He is author more than twenty collections of poetry, among them Poems (1965), The Youth of Don Quixote (1968), Cough (1970), Fountains in the Sea (1982), Water of Life, Water of Death (1987), Poems Selected by Censorship (1991), and The Crossing (1994). His valedictory volume, The Bridge , published posthumously in 1997, was composed during the final two months of his life, while he knew he was dying of liver cancer. Too weak commit them to paper himself, Sorescu often dictating the poems in this book to his wife, Virginia.

Shortly after the fall of Communist dictatorship in 1989, Sorescu was Minister of Culture.

Sorescu’s collection of Censored Poems were finally published after the fall of Ceausescu’s dictatorship. Amongst these, the best known is “House under surveillance”.

The six poems presented here in the translation of Constantin ROMAN were published in the Romanian issue of Transcript (7) of the University of Aberystwyth, Wales (see above link), of which five poems first appeared, in the early 1970’s in two separate issues of the now defunct London literary Quarterly “Encounter” and in the Cambridge Review
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THE CASE
By Marin Sorescu. Translated by Constantin Roman.

Your Honour,
As I was returning home,
From the War, as a volunteer,
They killed my Time.
Then I noticed, the Time being amputated
Of its heart, mouth and forehead.
Still, they will not leave it in peace.
So they condemned it to further painyears,
tearyears, Robotyears, donkeyyears
And a host of other things
Of no value to it.
They started turned it into a guinea pig
Testing all kinds of poisons
Like sadness and misfortune
Or such like names.
The fatal blow came when it was hit on the head
With a piece of hardwood destiny.
Pardon the expression, Your Honour,
This was no life!
Since then I have even forfeited half of death
Waiting for my turn in the queue
To make my case to Your Honour,
Here,
At the Last Judgement.

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SHAKESPEARE CREATED THE WORLD IN SEVEN DAYS
by Marin Sorescu. Translation by Constantin Roman.

The first day he made the sky,
The mountains, and the spiritual abysses.
The second day he made the rivers, the seas
The oceans, and the sentiments
Giving them to Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Antony, Cleopatra and Ophelia To Othello and others
To master, they and their descendants,
Unto eternity.
The third day he gathered all people
And taught them the tastes:
The taste or happiness, of love, of distress,
The taste or jealousy, glory and more
Until all tastes had been accounted for.
Then some characters came along late.
The creator patted them fondly on the head
And said the only thing left for them to become
Was literary critics
To deny his works.
The fourth and fifth days
Were dedicated to laughter.
He let out the clowns to do somersaults
And let kings, emperors
And other unfortunates have fun.
The sixth day ?He solved some administrative problems
Plotted a storm
And taught King Lear
To wear the crown of straws.
There was still some waste left
From the creation of the world
So he made Richard III.
The seventh day he wondered whether
There was anything left to do:
Stage directors had already
Flooded the earth with posters
So Shakespeare decided after so much labour
He deserved to see a show himself.
But first, as. he felt quite exhausted,
He passed away for a while.

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SUPERSTITION
by Marin Sorescu. Translated by Constantin Roman.

My cat is washing herself
With the left paw
We shall have another war
For I notice
Whenever she washes
With her left paw
International tension grows
Considerably
How can she see
The five continents?
Maybe in her eyes
The pythoness moves
Who knows by heart
All the world’s unpunctuated history.
I feel like crying
When I think that both I
And the heaven of souls bundled
On my back
Should depend in the last instance
On a capricious cat ?
Go and catch mice
Never again unleash ?World wars
Fuck off
You bitch.

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PAINTINGS
by Marin Sorescu. Translation by Constantin Roman.

All museums are afraid of me:
When I spend a whole day
Contemplating a painting
The following day they announce
It has disappeared.
Every day I am found stealing
In another part of the world
Yet I am unperturbed
By the bullets which whistle past my ears
And the police dogs
Which now know the smell of my steps
Better than lovers
The perfume of their beloved.
I talk loudly to the oil paintings
That endanger my life
I hang them up on the clouds and trees
Then step back to study the perspective.
With the Italian masters it’s easy to start a conversation
What a chatter of colours!
And so with them I am easily detected
Heard and seen from a distance
As if I were carrying parrots.
The most difficult to steal is Rembrandt.
You reach to touch him and come upon darkness
You panic, his people have no bodies
Only. eyes locked in dark cellars.
Van Gogh’s canvases are mad
They swirl and turn head over heel
You must keep a tight grip
With both hands
They are sucked in by some power of the moon.
Why should Breughel make me cry?
He was no older than me
Yet he was named the Elder
Because he was omniscient when he died.
I try to learn from him
But I can’t keep my tears
From running on his golden frames
As I escape, the Seasons under my arm.
As I say, each night I steal a painting
With a dexterity to be envied
And yet it is such a long way
And finally I am caught.
So home I come late at night
Tired, torn by dogs,
Bearing in my hands a cheap reproduction.

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FRESCO
by Marin Sorescu. Translated by Constantin Roman.

When the wicked
Are recycled in hell
Nothing goes to waste.
By means of tweezers
From women’s heads are gleaned
Combs, grips, pins, rings,
Soft goods and bed linen.
Then they are cast ?Into bubbling cauldrons
To see that the brimstone
Doesn’t boil over.
Afterwards, some
Are made into saucepans
And carry hot sins
To the homes of retired devils.
The males too are made use of
For all the heavy work.
?Except the very hairy:
They are rewoven
And made into doormats.

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Poetry in Translation (I): Ion Caraion – “Alone”

February 18th, 2003 · Poetry, Translations

“Where are you going, Sir?
In the garden, my Dream.
To do what, Sir?
To be shot, my Dream.
‘cause they have bullets, Sir?
‘cause they have time, my Dream.”

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Note:
Ion Caraion, (1923-1986), Poet, Essayist
(from “Am pe nimeni” – “I have nobody”)
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Translated from Romanian by:
Constantin Roman.
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