Tuesday, January 03, 2012

"The Vanishing Point That Whistles" - An Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry

Book launch organized by RCINY. The anthology represents a joint effort to bring one of the most significant recent Eastern European literary phenomena - Romanian post-communist poetry - to U.S. readers. Published by Talisman House, with funding from RCI's Translation and Publication Support Program, the anthology coordinated by Doru Paul Mugur gathers more than 40 contemporary Romanian poets. With this new anthology, Talisman House continues in 2012 its line of publishing Romanian authors in translation.

The poetry included in this volume reflects the alienation and the crisis of communication brought by the so-called "transition" period of the last twenty years in Romania from the beginning of the post-communist period in 1990 to the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century. This twenty-year span was defined not only by uncertainty and fears, social inequities and misery, but also by both an enthusiasm and a hope for the future that the recent inclusion of Romania in the European Union made real.

—from the introduction by Paul Doru Mugur

The Poets: Cristian Popescu, Ioan Es. Pop, Mihail Gălăţanu, Daniel Bănulescu, Floarea Ţuţuianu, Radu Andriescu, Simona Popescu, Emilian Galaicu-Păun, Ruxandra Cesereanu, O. Nimigean, Constantin Acosmei, Nicolae Coande, Mihai Ignat, Marius Ianuş, Dumitru Crudu, Adina Dabija, Ştefan Bălan, Teodor Dună, Ruxandra Novac, Mugur Grosu, George Vasilievici, Ioana Nicolaie, Radu Vancu, Andrei Peniuc, Dan Sociu, Adrian Urmanov, Răzvan Ţupa, Claudiu Komartin, Elena Vlădăreanu, Dan Coman, Miruna Vlada, V. Leac, Svetlana Cârstean, T.S. Khasis, Gabi Eftimie, Marius Conkan, Andrei Gamarţ, Michel Martin, Aida Hancer, Anonymous.

Most of the translations were prepared specifically for this edition by Adam J. Sorkin and Claudia Serea, with biographical notes and essays by the authors, Adam J. Sorkin and Mona Momescu.

Collaborative translations are by Adam J. Sorkin and Radu Andriescu, Ştefan Bălan, Cristina Cîrstea, Gabi Eftimie, Mihail Gălăţanu, Irma Giannetti, Mugur Grosu, Petru Iamandi, Ioana Ieronim, Claudiu Komartin, Michel Martin, Alina Miron, David Morley, Paul Doru Mugur, Roxana Muscă, Mihaela Niţă, Alina Savin, Dan Sociu , Saviana Stănescu, Bogdan Ştefănescu, Aura Ţeudan, Răzvan Ţupa, Adrian Urmanov, Radu Vancu, Lidia Vianu, Oana Zamfirache.

February 8, 6.30 pm
RCINY Auditorium
200 East 38th Street, New York, NY 10016

FREE ADMISSION

This Romanian poetry arrives in the 21st century like a much needed remedy for the excessive stylistic inventions that seem to accompany what is soon becoming an almost universal postmodern aesthetic. It's a book that I'd want my graduate students of poetry and literary translation to read. --Roger Sedarat

Waking up from a familiar nightmare into an unknown reality is not for the faint-hearted. More than two decades after the world and the poetry that buzzed in it shattered, Romanian poets are putting on lab coats, turning on recording devices, scouring the web they broadcast on, photoshopping bits and pieces of shards and routine, and questioning the tragic undertone of the hardwired lament in a culture that questions itself incessantly. Anyone able to hear the sound this poetry makes will be rewarded with a sharpening of their own tools of perception. --Andrei Codrescu

While reading Vanishing Point That Whistles, the Latin word 'artus' came to mind: related to anatomy, it indicates a joint; symbolically the word refers to strength or power (and, poetically, to the limbs). My feeling is that this anthology of new Romanian poetry exists as an important 'artus' point: a place where one historical/literary tradition bends into another. At the same time it's a locus of strength, with a natural ability to reach powerfully outward. Even more, though, it's a source of pure reading pleasure from one of the world's most poetic places. If you haven't yet gotten acquainted with the brilliance of contemporary Romanian poetry, enter here. --Sharon Mesmer

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Romanian Poetry on Screens

As a part of 100 thousand poets for change, 2011 poetry was put on screen in the middle of Bucharest on 24th of September.
This is a first video (not the official one yet) fot the event we had in Bucharest with poetry on the biggest media facade in Continental Europe (560 square meters/6,205 sq. ft.). It was the first time ever, when Romanian poetry was presented on this surface.
It included poetry by classical, modern, and contemporary Romanian poets selected to illustrate the idea of change.

a galery of images from the event can be seen here

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Romanian Writers on Writing


"Romanian Writers on Writing"was published very recently by Trinity University Press
The collection Manea has edited of Romanian Writers on Writing (2011) is one of those books that opens up a whole world that overflows the banks of the present nation of Romania. It’s a world previously unavailable to all who must wait for translations into English. We have had bright flashes of that world in the amazing work of those who left Romania during the twentieth century and found readers and audiences elsewhere—driven out or voluntarily withdrawing from that oppressed place—including Paul Celan, E. M. Cioran, Eugene Ionesco, Mircea Eliade, Andrei Codrescu, and Manea himself (to say nothing of the artists Constantin Brancusi and Saul Steinberg, the pianists Dinu Lupati and Radu Lupu, the composer Georges Enescu). Only a few Romanian poets have been translated into English, among them Tudor Arghezi, Ion Caraion, and Benjamin Fondane (who wrote in French). Now Manea’s edited collection of Romanian writings on writing give us a fuller sense of how much we are missing. from The Center for the Writing Arts

Norman Manea (editor)
Sanda Cordoş (editor)
Carla Baricz (translator)
Raluca Manea (translator)

Trinity University Press

Series: The Writer’s World | Publication Date: 2011 | 336 p. in 8º

ISBN-10: 1595340823 | ISBN-13: 978-1595340825

Vanity doubled by vitality, vulnerability mixed in with force, and the fear of dissolution intimately linked with the desperate pride of defeating historical time confer upon Romanian literature a special tension, born from wandering and threat. The 81 writers gathered in Romanian Writers on Writing explore this unsettling tension and exemplify the powerful, polyphonic voice of their country’s complex literature. The Writer’s World series features writers from around the globe discussing what it means to write, and to be a writer, in other countries. The series collects a broad range of material and provides access for the first time to a body of work never before gathered in English, or, perhaps, in any language.

Table of Contents
Preface
xi

Norman Manea
Introduction
1(7)

Sanda Cordos

"The Personality of the Creator"

8(1)

Mihai Eminescu

"To My Critics"

9(3)

From "Some Opinions"

12(6)

Ion Luca Caragiale

From "Letter"

14(2)

Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu

16(2)

From "Autobiography"


Tudor Arghezi

"Cuts on the Arm of the Pen"

18(3)

"Gloss"

21(1)

George Bacovia

"Enough"

21(2)

From Adrian Zografi

23(4)

Panait Istrati

From "Remember"

27(3)

Mateiu I. Caragiale

From "Confessions"

30(4)

Liviu Rebreanu

From Procrustes' Bed

34(4)

Camil Petrescu

"To My Readers"

38(1)

Lucian Blaga

"Self-Portrait"

38(1)

"Biography"

39(2)

"Notes from a Literary Confession"

41(3)

Ion Barbu

"It Evenings"

44(1)

Tristan Tzara

"Introduction to Don Quixote"

45(2)

From "A Few Wild Words"

47(6)

Benjamin Fundoianu

Benjamin Fondane

"On Writing and Writers"

53(5)

Mircea Eliade

From "The Curse of Writing"

58(4)

Mihail Sebastian

From The Lucent Den

62(5)

Max Blecher

From "An Inner Daimon"

67(3)

Octav Sulutiu

From "When I Write"

70(5)

Eugene Ionesco

Eugen Ionescu

From "Advantages of Exile"

75(4)

E.M. Cioran

"Tragedies That Must Occur"

79(3)

Gherasim Luca

From White of the Bone

82(2)

Gellu Naum

From God Was Born in Exile

84(3)

Vintila Horia

"Not to forget ..."

87(4)

Ion D. Sirbu

"Partisan of the Erotical Absolute"

91(1)

Paul Celan

"Perhaps One Day"

91(3)

"Assyriology (The Library of Clay Books)"

94(5)

Alexandru Sever

From "The Writer and the Word"

99(4)

Marin Preda

From The Syllable Hatter

103(3)

Ion Caraion

From "The Team Passing through the World"

106(5)

Constantin Toiu

"The Immigration Department"

111(3)

Nina Cassian

"Cognitio Incogniti"

114(7)

Petru Dumitriu

"The Noble Fool of Totality"

121(3)

Leonid Dimov

"The Second Love"

124(2)

Octavian Paler

"Ill from Unwritten Books"

126(3)

Radu Petrescu

From "Wanda, or the Interpretation Syndrome"

129(5)

Mircea Horia Simionescu

From "My Art Was Born from Fear"

134(2)

Radu Cosasu

From "The Text Writes Itself"

136(3)

Mircea Ivanescu

From "My Soul, Psyche"

139(2)

Nichita Stanescu

"The Poet, Like the Soldier"

141(3)

"Prisoner or Master of Language?"

144(5)

Nora Iuga

"Why Do I Write? What Do I Believe In?"

149(5)

Nicolae Breban

From Writing and Reading or Vice Versa

154(5)

Matei Calinescu

"Stanzas"

159(1)

Florin Mugur

"The Dance with the Book"

160(1)

"That Which Remains"

161(2)

From "The Colors of the Rainbow"

163(2)

Paul Goma

From "The Raft on the Crest of the Wave"

165(4)

George Balaita

"How to Be a Fakir"

169(1)

Marin Sorescu

"House under Surveillance"

170(2)

"Praise of the Anonymous"

172(3)

Dumitru Tepeneag

From "Existence Starts to Gain Density"

175(2)

Cezar Baltag

From Letter to Lucian Raicu

177(3)

Emil Brumaru

From "The Story of a Title"

180(3)

Virgil Duda

From "Fear of Literature"

183(4)

Ana Blandiana

From "Literature as Religion and Fear"

187(2)

Gabriela Adamesteanu

"preface"

189(1)

Virgil Mazilescu

"honey on the tongue"

190(2)

From "To Write"

192(6)

Gabriela Melinescu

"Bi-lingual"

198(1)

Andrei Codrescu

From "Toward a Liberal Grammar"

199(3)

Stefan Agopian

"Horizontal Man"

202(3)

Mircea Nedelciu

"Night"

205(4)

Ioan Petru Culianu

From "I Am Always Behind"

209(3)

Alexandra Vlad

From The Body Knows More

212(3)

Gheorghe Craciun

"The Art of Seduction"

215(1)

Floarea Tutuianu

"La femme poison"

216(2)

"The Poetry of the Everyday"

218(4)

Alexandra Musina

"The Ladder"

222(1)

Marta Petreu

"Night Letter to Tame My Beloved"

222(4)

"Life Undone by Poetry"

226(1)

Ion Muresan

"The Poem That Cannot Be Understood"

226(3)

"I Am Not So Sure"

229(5)

Magda Carneci

"Kitty (or the Great Fear has come)"

234(2)

Mariana Marin

"A Giant Drop of Water Reflecting a Chimera"

236(4)

Mircea Cartarescu

"To Write in Despair"

240(3)

Razvan Petrescu

"The Falling Crumbs"

243(1)

Matei Visniec

"Like Clothes Grown Too Large"

243(3)

From "The Power of Words"

246(4)

Carmen Firan

"`Madness' and the Art of Writing"

250(4)

Bogdan Ghiu

From "Gruelingly Squeezed Light"

254(4)

Cristian Popescu

"The Flooded Submarine"

258(2)

Ruxandra Cesereanu

"The Pact with Yourself: Opus or Life?"

260(2)

Simona Popescu

"Writing and the Culinary Predilections of My Grandfather"

262(6)

Filip Florian

"How Should I Write?"

268(3)

Florina Ilis

"The Path to the Other"

271(5)

Doina Ioanid

"How I Did Not Become a Genius"

276(4)

Dan Lungu

From "The Secret Code: Notes for a Literary Confession"

280(7)

Bogdan Suceava

"Our Special Envoy"

287(5)

Florin Lazarescu

"A Sort of Jogging"

292(3)

Ana Maria Sandu

"Character"

295(8)

Lucian Dan Teodorovici

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Literary Crossroads - New Scene Romania: poetry

Literarische Crossroads - New Scene Romania: poetry


Reading and discussion

New Romanian Poetry - 20 years after the change: change in perspective, different priorities, new forms of language. Between commitment and aestheticism: Razvan Tupa and Gabriel H. Decuble, two representatives of the younger Romanian literary scene in reading and discussion with Ulf Stolterfoht.
...
Chair: Corina Bernic

25th March 2011, 19 clock, artists Edenkoben

28th March 2011, 19 clock, bookshop Himmelheber, Heidelberg

More info can be found HERE.

"New Romanian Scene: Poetry" is the first stage of the project "Crossroads of Literature ", which will extend until the end of September, and present new poetry, prose and photography from Romania and Moldova to German audience with the help of German-known authors. The second stage of the project (fall 2011) is devoted to new fiction from Romania and Moldova and its visual transmission in photography (the reading of three authors from these countries will form the prelude to a photo exhibition)

This project was conceived by Corina Bernic, cultural manager from Romania and funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

New Romanian Poetry - 20 years after the change: change in perspective, different priorities, new forms of language. Between commitment and aestheticism: Razvan Tupa and Gabriel H. Decuble, two representatives of the new Romanian literary scene in reading and discussion with Ulf Stolterfoht. Chair: Corina Bernic

Razvan Tupa (b. 1975) - poet, cultural manager. Since 2005 he has hosted the weekly reading series poetics of the quotidian in Bucharest, Club A, which he developed in 2009 in the relational poetics. He published articles in Romanian newspapers and magazines (Evenimentul Zilei, Prezent, Max, Suplimentul de Cultura). Between 2005 and 2007, he was chief editor of Versus-versum, then from 2006 to 2008 editor of cultural magazine Cuvantul. He attended readings in Rome, Paris, New York, Berlin, Prague, Chisinau, Bratislava and Budapest. 2009, he released together with the poet Andrei Ruse the poetry film “Poezie.puterea” (Poetry.The Power) with 24 Romanian poets. He published “fetis” (2001) and “corpuri romanesti” (2005). Lives and works in Bucharest.

Gabriel H. Decuble (b. 1968) - poet, essayist, literary critic, translator. Decuble studied the Germanic and classical philology in Jassy, ​​Freiburg and Paris. Lecturer at the Germanic-Chair of the University of Bucharest University. Editor and co-author of the extensive memoirs of younger Romanian writers Pink Book of Communism (2004). Latest book of poetry : “Eclectica”, Bucharest (2007) German Language Publications: “inter alia Poetry” (Berlin Anthology, 2010) and theoretical writings. He translated works of world literature and philosophy from German (Meister Eckhart, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Adorno, Handke, etc.), English and French .

Ulf Stolterfoht (1963). Author, translator. In the spring of 2000. Ulf Stolterfoht has published numerous volumes of poetry and translations. His work has won many awards, including Anna Seghers Prize (2005), Christine Lavant Prize, Peter Huchel Prize (2008). He was Fellow of the Villa Massimo in Rome in 2007. Since 2008 He is visiting Professor at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. Editor: Christoph Buchwald Yearbook of poetry (Fischer 2008). Among the new releases (selected): “wood smoke on Heslach. Poems” (Urs Engeler Editor, 2007), “technical language XXVIII-XXXVI. Poems” (2009), “the Nomentano-manifest” (2009) “ammengespräche. rough books” (2010).

This project was conceived by Corina Bernic, cultural manager from Romania and funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Admission: 7 €, reduced 4 €

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Mihail Galatanu in English


Mihail Gălățanu was born in 1963 in the Romanian city of Galaţi. He published his first book of poems,Stiri despre mine (News About Me, Bucharest: Litera) in 1987, his second, Scrîşnind în pumni (Keeping My Fists Tight, Galaţi, Romania: Porto Franco, 1993), six years later, and since then, the equivalent of a book of poetry or prose each year. Among recent poetry titles are Mormîntul meu se sapă singur (My Grave Digs Itself, Bucharest: Vinea, 2003) and, from the same publisher, Burta înstelată(The Starry Womb, 2005), from which these poems derive. Gălățanu was editor-in-chief of Playboy Romanian and a glossy monthly magazine, Flacăra; he currently edits a financial publication. (from Diode)

Deceiver's World

Mihail Gălăţanu

Prologue
A Church of Chalk
(My Mother)
(...)
5. My Birth Is Endless


I never suffered claustrophobia. I never felt the least claustrophobic in my mother's womb. Neither lonely nor downcast. How can you feel lonely when you're inside another, a woman?
When another being takes you in, contains you?
At most, you can be
happy.
I never was a claustrophobe.
My life had a happy ending.
Birth.
And my birth is endless.
(...)
(The entire poem can be read translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Petru Iamandi for Asymptote Journal)