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" ................... Site Index Synopsis Introduction Index of People Index by Profession Extracts From The Book: Princess Marthe Bibesco Ana Blandiana Smaranda Braescu Madelene “Madi” Cancicov Nina Cassian Elena Ceausescu Ioana Celibidache Queen Elisabeth of Romania Princess Gregoire Ghica Princess Ileana of Romania Dora D’Istria Monica Lovinescu Ileana Malancioiu Queen Marie of Romania Dr. Agnes Kelly Murgoci Mabel Nandris Countess Anna de Noailles Ana Novac Oana Orlea Ana Pauker Marta Petreu Elisabeta Rizea of Nucsoara Sanda Stolojan Leontina Vaduva Anca Visdei Sabina Wurmbrand |
"Blouse Roumaine" - Extracts from the Book .................................................................................................. selected and introduced by Constantin Roman. Nina Cassian .................................................................................................. (b.1924 Galati), Poet, Novelist, Translator, Composer, Exile living in New York since 1985 Biography: “I left those walls smeared with my blood? it was an atrocious massacre. Now I’m flying over the city not like a Chagall bride beside her bridegroom, the violinist, but like a winged nightmare with an entire biography of dirty feathers.?” Conviction: "I worked to be understood by the farmers and workers, I was torturing myself and distorting my artistry. Some of us Romanian writers did it with conviction. That was the worst." Excluded: "They don't want me there, I'm not sure why. They used to consider me eccentric and rebellious...But now maybe it's because they resent that I'm living a better life in America." Uprooting: "It is a terrible tragedy to, at age 60, leave your country and live in a place where you are surrounded by a foreign language and with two impossible professions -- poetry and classical music, I had had my share of fame and glory, and didn't expect more." -------------------------- Biography:  Nina Cassian is a personality of many facets and the contradictions of her life reflect in a way the tragedy of many Romanian intellectuals, whose career started before the war and subsequently had to adapt in order to survive, some of them more zealosly than others. Nina Cassian falls into the latter category. For the generation that grew immediately after the war in Communist Romania, Cassian’s poems were the staple diet of the Marxist text books – of ‘approved’ literature. After the fall of Ceausescu she said (see quote) that she compromised “without conviction” whilst she “tortured her artistry” – well, other people who did not compromise at all were instead marginalized, starved, or worse, were thrown into prisons where they died or came out only a ghost of their former selves. By contrast, Nina Cassian composed with those in power whilst the going was good. Her poems were turned into cantatas by Anatol Vieru , another creature of sorry memory – a Cantata was the kind of epic intended to the glory of the Communist Party. Cassian is not repentend for her past “Communist sympathies”, but then she goes on saying, in the same breath that after 1989 she was no longer wanted in Romania… where she wished to return only after five years of American exile (see quote). She assigns this rejection by her fellow Romanians to the inherent envy of human nature – but this is not enough to explain the nausea expressed by those who stayed behind, put up and shut up, without compromising and remaining true to themselves. Nina Cassian left Ceausescu’s Romania in 1985, at the age of 61 and after 40 years of Communism, during which time, as a poet of the day she published 50 volumes of verse (and some fiction) vetted by the censorship of a Gheorghiu Dej, Ana Pauker and Ceausescu. In defence of the poet it must be said that apparently she wrote also some scathing verse about Ceausescu. These were found out when a close friend was arrested and tortured. At the time Cassian was already ensconced in New York on a Fulbright Scholarship, so she applied for and was granted political asylum in America. Perhaps Cassian’s poem, quoted above sums up best the poet’s own view of herself, describing herself hovering over the city she had left behind (Bucharest), after a murderous massacre (Communist oppression), flying over it with “an entire biography of dirty feathers” (mixing with the unholy). Cassian translated the “Twelfth Night” into Romanian although surprisingly she admits that her English was “sketchy” when she arrived in the United States. She appears to be best known by her fellow American poets rather than by the general public in America. Not so in Romania, but for different reasons. Bibliography: - Life Sentence (1990) - Blue Apple - Lady of Miracles - Call Yourself Alive - “Take My Word for It," 1998 Poetry in Romanian - On the Scale of One to One (La scala 1/1) - Our Soul (Sufletul Nostru) - Vital Year, 1917 (An viu, noua sute si saptesprezece) - Horea not alone anymore (Horea nu mai esta singur) - Youth (Tinerete) - Selected poems (Versuri alese) - The Measures of the Year (Verstele anulai) - Dialogue of the Wind and Sea (Dialogul vintuli cu marea) - Open-air performance—A Monograph of Love (Spectacol in aer liber—o monografie a dragostei) - Gift Giving (Sa ne facum daruri) - The Discipline of the Harp (Disciplina harfei) - The Blood (Singele) - Parallel Destinies (Destinele Paralele) - Ambit (Ambitus) - Time Devouring: Selected Poems (Cronofagie) - Requiem (Recviem) - The Big Conjugation (Marea conjugare) - Lotto Poems (Loto poeme) - Suave (Suave) - Spectacle in the Open-air: Selected Love Poems (Spectacol in aer liber) - One Hundred Poems (O suta de poeme) - Orbits (Viraje) - For Mercy (Indurare) - Count Down (Numaratoarea inversa) Fiction in Romanian - You're Terrific—I'm Leaving You: (Atit de grozava si adio) - Fictitious Confessions (Confidente fictive) - Parlor Games (Jocuri de vacanta) |
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