Lucian
Blaga (Romania)
1895-1961
Born
in Lancrăm, Transylvania into the family of a Romanian Orthodox priest, Lucian
Blaga was educated in German with a philosophical focus, including the
teachings of Lessing, Nietzsche and Bergson. After graduating from the
seminary, Blaga attended the University of Vienna, studying philosophy and
biology.
A year later, in 1919, he published his
first collection of poetry, Poemele luminii (Poems of Light), and soon
became one of the founders of the journal Gîndirea, which was to become
one of the most innovative magazines in Romania before the War. Two years later
he published another collection, Pasii profetului (In the Footsteps of
the Prophet), followed by dramas and, in 1924, another collection of poetry, În
marea trecere (In the Great Passage).
During this same period Blaga began his career as a journalist and diplomat, serving as press attaché in Vienna beginning in 1932 and later as ambassador to Portugal. In 1939 he returned to Romania to become professor of philosophy at the University of Cluj. During this period he became a member of the Romanian Academy and wrote important philosophical writings that would later make up the Trilogia culturii, which, along with Trilogia cunoaşterii and Trilogia valorilor, outlined in which he outlined methods for exploring what he described as "ultimate reality" and a new cultural theory in which he tied culture to the expression of a metaphysics. Late in the 1930s and early 1940s Blaga published his last two collections of poetry, including La curţile dorului (At the Court of Yearning) and Nebănuitele trepte.
Blaga continued publishing and translating the works of Goethe and Schelling until his death in 1961.
This
site hosts a large selection of Blaga's poetry in Romanian, with links to
numerous other
Romanian
poets: http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poeti/blaga.php
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Poemele
luminii
(1919); Pasii profetului (1921); În marea trecere (1924); Lauda
somnului (1929); La cumpăna apelor (1933); La curţile dorului
(1938); Nebănuitele trepte (1943); Opere [5 volumes] (1974-1977).
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Poems
of Light,
translated by Roy MacGregor-Hastie, Don Eulert, Stefan Avadanei and Mikhail
Borgdan (Bucharest: Minerva, 1975); Poezii/Poems, edited by Michael Taub
and translated by Alfred Margul-Sperber (Bucharest: Minerva, 1981/Chapel Hill:
Department of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina, 1983); At the
Court of Yearning, translated and introduced by Andrei Codrescu (Columbus:
Ohio State University Press/A Sandstone Book, 1989).
A
Man Bends over the Edge
I
bend over the edge:
is
it the sea
or
my poor thought?
My
soul falls deeply
slipping
like a ring
from
a finger weakened by fever.
Come,
end, sprinkle ash on things.
There
is no longer a path.
No
longer am I haunted by a call.
Come,
end.
I
raise myself slightly from the earth
on
one elbow
to
listen.
Water
beats against a shore.
Nothing
else, nothing,
nothing.
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
În marea trecere, 1924)
Heraclitus
by the Lake
The
paths come together by the green waters.
Silences
crowd there, inhuman and abandoned.
Hush,
dog, sniffing the wind with your nose!
Don't
chase away the memories that come
to
bury themselves, crying in their own ashes.
Leaning
on a tree stump I try to guess my fate
from
the palm of an autumn leaf.
Time,
which way do you go
when
you take a shortcut?
My
steps echo in shadow
like
rotten fruit
falling
from an unseen tree.
O
the stream's voice is sore with age!
Each
movement of the hand
is
one more doubt.
Sorrows
call in the secret
ground
below.
I
throw thorns into the lake:
I
am undone in the ripples.
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
În marea trecere, 1924)
The
Magic Bird
Molded
in gold by C. Brancusi
High-signed
Orion blesses you
in
the sudden wind.
A
tear shedding above you
its
high and holy geometry.
You
lived once on a sea bottom
and
circled closely the solar fire.
Your
cry sounded from floating forests
over
the first waters.
Are
you a bird? A traveling bell?
Or
a creature, an earless jug perhaps?
A
golden song spinning
above
our fear of dead riddles?
Living
in the dark the tales
you
play ghostly reed pipes
to
those who drink sleep
from
black subterranean poppies.
The
light in your green eyes is
phosphorus
peeled from old bones.
Listening
to wordless revelation
you
are lost in flight in celestial grass.
You
guess profound mysteries
under
the hewn domes of your afternoons.
Soar
on endlessly
but
do not reveal to us what you see.
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
Lauda somnului, 1929)
Old
City
Night.
The hours turn
without
urging.
Be
still—clock hands
stop—sighing
on
the ultimate sign.
Creatures
of sleep
crawl
under gates—
red
dogs and trouble.
On
the streets—tall and thin
the
rain walks on stilts.
Old
weary wind between walls
shakes
dirt and iron gates.
Countrymen
from bygone times
flash
up a moment and vanish.
The
black tower stands its ground
counting
the years of defeat.
Be
still—the stone saint
just
extinguished his halo.
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
Lauda somnului, 1929)
Enchanted
Mountain
I
enter the mountain: a stone gate quietly shuts.
Dream
and bridges fly me up.
What
violet lakes! What vital time!
The
gold fox barks from the ferns.
Holy
beasts lick my hands: strange,
under
a spell, they stalk with eyes turned within.
Buzzing
through the sleep of crystals
the
bees of death fly. And the years. The years.
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
La cumpana apelor, 1933)
Divine
Touch
What
apparition! Ah, what light!
A
white star fell into the garden,
Unexpected,
unsought. Luck,
arrow,
flower, fire.
In
the high grass, in the wide silk,
it
fell from the house of time.
A
star came back to our world.
My
hands bear its scar.
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
La cumpana apelor, 1933)
At
the Court of Yearning
Our
vigils: flour sifters.
Time
passes through—
white
dust in our hair.
Rainbows
catch fire still:
we
wait. We await
the
solitary hour
to
share in the green
kingdom,
the sunlit heaven.
We
are still:
wooden
spoons forgotten
in
the gruel of long days.
We
are the guests on the parch
of
the new light
at
the court of yearning,
neighbors
of the sky.
We
wait to catch a glimpse
through
gold columns
of
teh age of fire—
our
daughters come out
to
crown the doorways with laurel.
Now
and then a tear springs up
to
bury itself painlessly in the cheek—
who
knows what pallid star it feeds?
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
La curtile dorului, 1938)
Awakening
The
tree starts. March echoes.
The
bees gather and mix in their combs
awakening,
honey, and wax.
Unsure
between two borders,
its
veins reaching under seven fields,
my
tree, my chosen one, sleeps,
dragon
of the horizon.
My
tree.
The
wind shakes it, March echoes.
The
powers join together
to
relieve it of the weight of its being,
to
raise it from sleep, from its divine state.
From
the height of the mountain
who
sifts to cover it with so much light?
Like
tears—the buds overwhelm it.
Sun,
sun, why did you wake him?
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
La curtile dorului, 1938)
Magic
Sunrise
This
is the way it was, the way it will be always.
I
wait with my flower of flames in my hand.
Disturbing
my greatly exaggerated weeks
the
moon powerfully rises.
An
earthquake shakes the midnight spheres.
In
space—river, shadows, towers, hooves.
The
hieratic star liturgically undresses the country.
Up
there in the light how fragile the mountain!
The
gods' cities crumble in the eyes of children
like
old silk.
How
holy matter is,
all
sound to the ear!
—Translated
from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from
Nebanuitele trepte, 1943)
Permissions
"A
Man Bends over the Edge," "Heraclitus by the Lake," "The
Magic Bird," "Old City," "Enchanted Mountain,"
"Divine Touch," "At the Court of Yearning,"
"Awakening," and "Magic Sunrise"
Reprinted
from At the Court of Yearning, trans. with an Introduction by Andrei
Codrescu (Columbus: Ohio State University Press/A Sandstone Book, 1989).
Copyright ©1989 by the Ohio State University Press. Reprinted by permission of
the Ohio State University Press.
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