11 novembre 2009
Gheorghe Dinica - loved by everyone
A sad and heartfelt farewell to this wonderful and much loved actor. It has been a tragic year for Roumanian theatre indeed. The following from Yahoo News:
Gheorghe Dinica, well known Romanian actor, dies
BUCHAREST, Romania – Gheorghe Dinica, a Romanian actor who delighted his country by portraying characters such as villainous politicians and defiant Gypsies in dozens of plays and movies, died Tuesday. He was 75.
Dinica, famous throughout Romania, died at Floreasca Hospital in Bucharest from pneumonia with complications, said hospital spokesman Dr. Bogdan Oprita.
Dinica began his long acting career with a role in a Romanian film version of Albert Camus' "The Stranger" in 1963. He went on to perform in many Romanian and foreign movies, soap operas and plays, right up until his death.
In 2007, he acted in Francis Ford Coppola's "Youth Without Youth" movie. He also joined French actor Anthony Delon in the film "L'Homme Press" in 2005. He said he was never tempted to act in movies produced in the United States.
"I am not Robert de Niro. I am from Romania," he said.
Still, some called Dinica "the Robert de Niro of Romania," given his resemblance to the American actor.
Romanians admired him for his wide repertoire and his singing, but also because of his modesty, humor and his refusal to praise the country's late Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, as some artists had done.
"I was lucky because my face didn't look that good on television," he said.
Dinica frequently thrilled Romanians by spontaneously breaking 
into song at Bucharest restaurants where he was dining.
Marcel Iures, another well-known Romanian actor, said of Dinica: "We worked together, we acted and we laughed together."
"He was an angel all his life," Iures said on Realitatea TV.
Romanian actor Florin Zamfirescu said: "He was loved by everyone: directors, actors and the public, men and women alike. On stage, he was like a fish in water."
Upon receiving news of Dinica's death, Romanian President Traian Basescu called the actor "a model of humanity, modesty and generosity."
Dinica acted in comedy and drama with equal aplomb, and was best known on stage for his role in the seven-year production of the play "Take, Lanke and Cadar," a 1933 dry Romanian comedy by Victor Ion Popa about three friends — a Jew, a Christian and a Turk — who run modest shops in the same area.
In his last two years, Dinica starred in "Regina" and "Heart of a Gypsy," two soap operas about Gypsies, a minority in Eastern Europe that faces widespread discrimination. They also are known as Roma.
He also starred in "Aniela," a Romanian period play that came out this fall.
Dinica, who was born in Bucharest in 1934, was awarded several prizes in Romania during his life, including the Faithful Service Order in 2008 by Basescu.
Dinica is survived by his wife, Gabriela Georgeta Dinica, whom he married in 1996.
No funeral plans were immediately announced.
Plesita finally kicked the gâleata - and good riddance
This news comes late and it looks as if I am the very last to know. Why didn't you guys tell me? What am I talking about, you ask....the death of the wicked, evil ex-Securitate chief, Plesita, has cheered me up no end...but how disgusting to imagine that his pension was 6 (some say 10) times higher than the average ($2,250 which he said was well deserved after all he had done for his country), that he continued to live in the villa bestowed on him by Ceausescu and while his old victims were still dealing with his cruelty (he dragged Paul Goma around prison by his beard before beating the life out of him) he was living a very comfortable life, thank you very much. Just goes to show that the old adage is pretty accurate - the devil looks after his own. This slug made it to 80 years old...and by Roumanian standards, that's almost a fossil. This was the scumbag, the slime, who ordered the beating up of Monica Lovinescu in Paris, leaving her for dead in her stairwell. His biggest failure was not killing Ion Pacepa, of course. One of Roumania's biggest failures was allowing this sleazeball to continue breathing at all.
This from The Seattle Times, of all places - and my apologies for such tardiness.
Feared Romanian Securitate chief Plesita dies
Gen. Nicolae Plesita, a die-hard Communist and ruthless chief of the Securitate secret police who arranged shelter in Romania for terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and was tried for the bombing of Radio Free Europe has died, news reports said Wednesday. He was 80.
Associated Press Writer
BUCHAREST, Romania —
Gen. Nicolae Plesita, a die-hard Communist and ruthless chief of the Securitate secret police who arranged shelter in Romania for terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and was tried for the bombing of Radio Free Europe has died, news reports said Wednesday. He was 80.
Plesita died Monday in Bucharest in a Romanian Intelligence Service hospital, where he was being treated for various illnesses including diabetes, the Agerpres and Mediafax news agencies reported, citing family members. Radu Chirca, a city hall official in Plesita's hometown of Curtea de Arges said he would be buried there later Wednesday.
Iulian Vlad, the last Securitate chief, and several other former Securitate officers attended Plesita's funeral, Realitatea TV reported. Agents of the current Romanian Intelligence Service stopped reporters and others from attending the funeral, citing the family's wishes.
Plesita commanded the Securitate's foreign intelligence service from 1980 to 1984. He gained notoriety for his contacts with Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal.
Ramirez was hired by the Securitate on the orders of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to assassinate Romanian dissidents in France and bomb the Radio Free Europe offices in Munich in 1981. Nine people were injured in the attack on the Munich-based radio station, which broadcast into communist Eastern Europe.
In 1998, Plesita told court prosecutors that Ceausescu had ordered him to find temporary shelter for Ramirez in Romania after the bombing. Ceausescu sold arms and explosives to Ramirez and enabled him to produce counterfeit passports and driver's licenses, Romanian media reported.
After the 1989 anti-communist revolt, Plesita faced a military trial in Romania for being an accomplice in the Radio Free Europe attack, in which nine people were injured. The trial was interrupted several times and he was eventually found innocent earlier this year.
In post-communist Romania, Plesita continued to attract attention with his revelations from the Communist period, and showed no remorse for having crushed anti-communist dissent.
Several times, he described how he beat up dissident writer Paul Goma and dragged him around Securitate cells by his beard. In 1982, when Plesita was head of the Securitate's foreign intelligence service, a Securitate agent attempted to poison Goma, who was in exile in France, but the attempt failed.
In an interview in 1999, Plesita said Ceausescu had enjoyed "special relations" with late French President Francois Mitterrand and gave him at least $400,000 for his presidential campaign in 1981.
Plesita's public appearances and relaxed manner were accepted in post-communist Romania partly because many former high-ranking Securitate officers still have key positions in politics and business.
After communism ended, Plesita continued to live in a villa in Bucharest reportedly given to him by Ceausescu. Last year he had one of the highest state pensions in Romania, 6,500 lei ($2,250) a month - more than six times the average.
Born April 16, 1929, Plesita was recruited to the Securitate as a teenager and rose in the ranks after he helped eradicate the last vestiges of anti-communist resistance in the Transylvanian mountains in the late 1950s. In 1977 he helped stifle striking coal miners in the Jiu Valley whose unrest posed a threat to Ceausescu.
It was after this that he was promoted to head foreign intelligence. A committed communist, Plesita was a harsh critic of Gen. Ion Pacepa, a top ranking Securitate officer who defected to the United States in 1978. Ceausescu hired Ramirez to assassinate Pacepa but he failed.
(This version CORRECTS second reference to Carlos the Jackal throughout, to Ramirez sted Sanchez.)
Please see this site for more information, at Plesita - May He Not Rest In Peace - an excellent post.
09 novembre 2009
From Croitoru to Negoita?! Oh purleez...
And so, the plot thickens...as predicted, Negoita is named PM...or rather, was. On Friday. The following from Hotnews:
Liviu Negoita is the new designated Prime Minister
de Alina Neagu, transl/adapt. C.B. HotNews.ro
Vineri, 6 noiembrie 2009, 13:33 English | Top News
Liviu Negoita, premierul desemnat
Foto: Rompres
Liviu Negoita was designated PM on Friday by president Traian Basescu, after final consultations with the political parties. Liviu Negoita is a member of the Liberal-Democratic Party (PD-L) and mayor of Bucharest's third sector. He announced that he would start negotiations for formation of a majority that would support the future coalition he'll be forming.
"Liviu Negoita announced that negotiations would last three days. The list of the new Cabinet would be sent to Parliament on Friday.
"I am open to the political forces in Parliament bearing in mind they have declared interest in adopting state budget", the designated PM said.
Traian Basescu's statements after meeting parliamentary group reps:
- PNL wants a government of technocrats led by Klaus Johannis.
- PSD wants a government of technocrats led by Klaus Johannis.
- UDMR backs a government led by Klaus Johannis, formed by technocrats and politicians.
- The national minorities propose a government headed by Klaus Johannis, formed by politicians.
- An equidistant proposal has been made, namely for the current government to remain in place until after the elections, but at the consultations we decided not to name the source of the proposal.
- PD-l backs the idea of a political government, which will assume political responsibility for getting over the difficult moment at the end of this year.
- The independents' group had a different position, who announced they will back any government that will manage the country's problems correctly.
- In my opinion, it is concerning that the majority prefers a government of technocrats. This creates the risk of this government to exist only for a certain period, a service government, used until we solve our problems.
- Romania needs a PM that is not to be trifled with.
- I decided to nominate Liviu Negoita.
- Liviu Negoita won the local elections with 80% of the votes, so he has the population's support.
PNL, the first party to come out of the consultations - Cotroceni does not understand that it cannot name a PM without parliamentary majority
PNL vice-president Ludovic Orban:
- Ten days ago, a PSD-PD-L was invested, which was presented as Basescu's dream.
- After an unmatched economic crisis, a political crisis has been triggered by the war between PSD and PD-L for the Interior Ministry.
- PNL leader Crin Antonescu found a solution to the political crisis, proposing a PM that gathered a parliamentary majority of almost 70%: Klaus Johannis.
- We expect the president to designate Klaus Johannis.
- Traian Basescu wanted to know where the parties stand, but this remains unchanged: PSD, PNL, UDMR and the minorities back Klaus Johannis.
Except for Emil Boc, the PD-L leader, no other party leader took part in the consultations, since they were engaged in other activities across the country."
Back to me again. So, everyone wants Klaus Johannis. Sounds good to me. Call me stupid, ignorant and whatever else you like, but if everyone wants him, why can't they have him? The elections begin with the first round on 22nd November. Why not simply cut a long story short, hit two birds with one stone and have him there as acting PM until the big change arrives. The likelihood is that Crin Antonescu will win, become Roumania's next prez (and a good thing too) since he's by far the best of the bunch and he will call Johannis as his PM as sure as eggz is eggz...so wouldn't it just save time and a whole load of fuss?????!!!!
Comments please.
Love Sarah still in the Nutmeg State
08 novembre 2009
PM position impossible for Johannis?
More intrigue in Roumanian politics...it seems that Klaus Johannis, the prominent mayor of Sibiu who has certainly become our favourite as the new PM, cannot take the helm even if he were to be elected. Why? Because an investigation run by EVZ shows that during his first term as mayor, Johannis was also manager of a company for a year, although the law does not allow mayors to take a leading position in a commercial firm.
How ridiculous. Since when was Roumanian politics that scrupulous, and anyway, someone show me a politician in government today without a single stain on his career, a single question mark and I shall gladly eat humble pie. What the heck is going on here? When there is a president who made one of his daughters secretary whilst the other not only managed to obtain a million euros in the space of a year but also managed the mysterious acquisition of an apartment at Baneasa that was entirely illegal, how can one possibly say Johannis has committed an illegality...we won't even go into detail concerning what the Prez's brother has been up to lately, nor how Basescu sniggers horribly whenever he mentions God...ugh...and Johannis is chucked out of the ring for such a low and unimportant fumble of an excuse? Of cooooooooooooourse! Negoita is the favourite, I'll bet!
Johannis, don't let'em grind you down! Up with PNL!!!
Bucovina - World Heritage
Thank you NYT for the article below:
NYT: Bucovina, the place where art and faith embrace
The Bucovina region in the far north of the country, wrote the Romanian scholar Silviu Sanie, is “one of those blessed realms where sacred and secular monuments have enriched the enchanting natural landscape,” New York Times writes in an extensive feature story on the Romanian region.
“During a recent week’s stay, I found this description remarkably apt,” the author says. “Once the easternmost province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bucovina (“land of beech trees”) today straddles the border between Romania and Ukraine: northern Bucovina was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and the region’s historic capital, Chernivtsi (Czernowitz in German and Cernauti in Romanian) lies just 30 kilometers, or about 18 miles, north of the frontier.”
The southern part, on the Romanian side, is a world of rolling farmland and steep forested hills, where antique villages and peasant culture coexist with new industry and modern construction. Horses and carts (and the occasional herd of cows) share the roads with SUVs, and intricately carved wood and other ornamentation still decorate many village homes and farmsteads.
Exceptional examples of a rich religious heritage form an important part of the mix. Here are Romania’s famous painted monasteries, built in the 15th and 16th centuries when the region, a stronghold of Orthodox Christianity, was threatened by Ottoman invaders.
The vividly colored frescoes on their exterior walls, masterpieces of Byzantine painting, tell the tales of saints and heroes, and portray in epic imagery the cataclysmic struggle between good and evil at the end of days. The monasteries are among Romania’s most celebrated cultural treasures. Listed on Unesco’s roster of world heritage sites, they draw large numbers of visitors throughout the year.
Here, too, however, are religious sites far less known and rarely visited that also form important components of the region’s deeply rooted spiritual patrimony. These are the centuries-old Jewish cemeteries, whose weathered tombstones bear extraordinary carvings that meld folk motifs and religious iconography into evocative examples of faith expressed through art.
“I was in the Bucovina to carry out research on Jewish tombstone art, and spent many hours photographing the richly sculpted tombstones in cemeteries in Radauti, Siret and other towns. But, traveling by car, I was also able to visit nearly half a dozen of the painted monasteries, all of them located within an easy drive of each other.”
Among them was Sucevita, a fortress-like complex in wooded hills that today is home to a monastic community of several dozen black-clad nuns. Protected by turreted defensive walls, it has a central church topped by an elegant steeple and covered with wonderfully bright paintings from 1602-04.
The simple church at Arbore, built in 1503, is on a much smaller scale. Shaded by trees in a secluded garden, it features faded but powerful paintings by the 16th-century artist Dragos Coman.
07 novembre 2009
A sprinkling of nutmeg
Some snippets of the beautiful Nutmeg State: Old Saybrook, Old Greenwich and Westport.
Politete în stil romanesc!
Un angajat Metrorex i-a întrebat pe pasageri dacă "s-au tâmpit"
Nepoliteţe la metrou. Un conductor i-a întrebat pe pasageri nici mai mult nici mai puţin decât dacă "s-au tâmpit".
Într-una din serile trecute, călătorii care se aflau într-un tren care tocmai pleca din Piaţa Victoriei au fost martorii unui moment inedit, potrivit Adevărul. Pentru că o persoană a încercat să forţeze uşa după semnalul "Atenţie, se închid uşile", conductorul de metrou a deschis microfonul şi s-a adresat pasagerilor. "Stimaţi călători, de ce nu lăsaţi uşile să se închidă? V-aţi tâmpit cu toţii, ce aveţi?!“
Conducerea Metrorex a declarat joi că se vor face cercetări în ceea ce priveşte circumstanţele în care s-a produs incidentul şi a catalogat purtarea angajatului drept una nepotrivită.
Problemele angajaţilor de la metrou sunt departe de a fi rezolvate. Nemulţumiţi de negocierile purtate cu reprezentanţii ministerului Transporturilor şi cu cei ai conducerii Metrorex, angajaţii de la metrou au anunţat că vor declanşa conflictul de muncă şi ameninţă chiar cu greva generală.
Sindicaliştii spun că nici până acum conducerea companiei nu a fost mandatată pentru a începe discuţiile cu salariaţii, iar dacă o soluţie nu va fi găsită la timp, săptămâna viitoare vor declanşa greva generală.
06 novembre 2009
Please pass the smantana!
Dear All,
How good to read a positive article about Roumanian cuisine. Shame Antony Bourdain didn't see it before he left to make his dreadful documentary. I would like to say that I miss it but it's impossible because, you see, here in Hamden CT there is home-made icre and salata de vinete every night, not to mention salata de boeuf sans boeuf, mamaligutsa cu smantana si branza and a palinka from time to time!
The pix added here are not connected to the article.
This article from Wednesday's Global Post:
Ram Pulp with a Side of Polenta
To enjoy restaurants in the new Bucharest you have to get past the menus.
By Paul Hockenos — Special to GlobalPost
Published: November 4, 2009 07:15 ET
Updated: November 5, 2009 11:49 ET
BUCHAREST, Romania — Of all the obstacles that Romania’s communist dictatorship put in the way of foreign journalists trying to cover the country, the daily quest for decent food was one of the most exasperating.
By the late 1980s, the hardline regime of tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu strictly rationed most basic foodstuffs. There were a few dreary restaurants — for those who could pay — but their fare was extremely limited and often so unappetizing that I, for one, usually left whole meals untouched. I remember one time lugging a backpack full of groceries from Budapest, intended as gifts, that I ended up devouring.
But that was 20 years ago, when Romanians endured Ceausescu’s despotic rule, the most suffocating in all of the Eastern bloc. Today, of course, Bucharest’s shops are chock full and there are restaurants of every kind. I returned to Bucharest open-minded and determined to make up for the past: Romanians rave about their traditional cuisine and I explored it by eating at a different locale every day for a week.
The first stop for gastronomy in Bucharest is the centrul istoric, the historic financial quarter, one of the few parts of downtown Bucharest that Ceausescu didn’t get around to leveling. During communism, it fell into disrepair and became a kind of ghetto where many Gypsies lived. Today bars, cafes and restaurants, including Hungarian and sushi spots, line its quaint, cobbled lanes.
The lively hubbub coming from an alleyway rathskeller called Curtea Berarilor tempted me inside. The dimly lit place resembled an Old World tavern with its thick wooden tables and low ceilings. It was packed with a congenial student-y crowd, and I soon learned why: For about $14, a table could order a “rack” 
of beer, namely 11 good-sized steins delivered by the barman on a long, thin wooden plank. The pub features the draft beer “Timisoreana” from western Romania.
In contrast to the time when foreigners were unwelcome in Romania, today the country bends over backward to accommodate guests from abroad. This includes translating menus even when the proprietors’ English might be rudimentary. Perched on a bar stool at the Curtea Berarilor, I wondered what a dish described as “pork bone + beans + pickles” might be. So I ordered a portion, along with just one frothy draft beer. What arrived was an absolutely massive piece of smoked pork (with no bone) surrounded by steaming hot, baked white beans — and a plate of pickles. I happily made my way through about a third of the hunk of meat and 
half the beans before giving up.
A Bucharest favorite, especially for lunch, is the small chain City Grill, which offers traditional homecooking at reasonable prices. The menu includes a plethora of Romanian standards: hearty soups, stuffed peppers with sour cream, pickled salads, spicy sausages and lots of polenta. For centuries the Romanian peasant has lived on a dish called mamaliga which is corn meal, first boiled then baked, with sour cream and a salty white cheese. Every Romanian household serves it, which is why (yes, this is counterintuitive) in the past it was impossible to get in restaurants. My ground pork and rice stuffed in cabbage 
leaves (sarmalute, a dish known across the Balkans) came with a side of boiled polenta. It was excellent with the savory stuffed cabbage rolls, a refreshing alternative to the potatoes or rice one would expect elsewhere.
Another regional speciality is tripe soup, made from the mixed innards of cattle. Romanians crave it and claim it cures hangovers like nothing else. I steered clear of this kind of thing, even though the waiter at one al fresco restaurant energetically insisted that I try it. But I decided to be adventurous in another way. The menu at Restaurant Crama Blanduziei was a train wreck of mangled English including such translations as “fried brain in egg,” “foul liver in a pan,” “garlic juice” and “boneless chicken pulps in a pot.” I went for the “ram pulp pastrami” having no idea what to expect, though 
fairly certain it wasn’t innards. It turned out to be cured lamb, I think, thinly sliced and cooked on the open grill outside. The meal came with a big mound of polenta and picked red peppers. All in all, quite delicious.
I left Bucharest with a good feeling about my culinary mission. It certainly banished those bad memories from the days of the dictatorship. And although I may take a week off from polenta, I’m intending to surprise my next dinner guests with corn meal mush Romanian-style.
Tudor Banus - Exhibition in Paris 8è
Bucharest born Tudor Banus: Painter, artist, engraver, author, book (see pix right - "The Muppet Show Book" by its inventor and "Particularly Cats" by Doris Lessing) and press illustrator whilst also being a friend of mine (which certainly adds to your interest, I'm sure). Do
please take a look at his very well-done and easy to navigate homepage.
Tudor is having two vernissages at the Galérie Paul Amarica, 21 rue Washington, 75008 Paris, métro George V on 19 November 18h30-21h and 21st November 18h-20h30, with the exhibition running from 20 November through until 24 December.
Since those of you able to attend are living in Paris, I'll keep this post in French. Please, please go and support Tudor. I am sorry that I am unable to be amongst those raising a glass to him. He deserves a very successful exhibition - and should you have an empty space on your wall, why not invest in one of Tudor's paintings.
Here's Tudor's bio and a bunch of impressive critics to motivate you:
Né le 8 juillet 1947 à Bucarest.
Diplômé de l'École d'architecture et d'urbanisme de Bucarest en 1971. Études d'architectures, de technique ancienne de peinture à l’huile et de gravure à l'École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ateliers Wacker et A. Pincas).
Il quitte définitivement la Roumanie en 1972 et s'établit à Paris.
Première exposition personnelle en 1974. A obtenu en 1979 le prix pour le plus beau livre pour la jeunesse avec Les Musiciens de la ville de Brême, des Frères Grimm. Depuis 1976, il collabore à plus de cinquante journaux et revues (dessins et couvertures), dont Le Monde, Die Zeit, The New York Times, L'Express, etc...
Tudor Banus --- roumain, ce peintre illustrateur allie une fantaisie extraordinaire à un foisonnement typiquement baroque, donnant naissance à un délire fantastique original : Dürer revu et corrigé par les surréalistes.
L'Express
Tudor Banus a deux qualités qui sont rarement réunies dans la même personne, celle du talent et de l'intellect. Il est capable de satisfaire à la fois l'exigence esthétique et intellectuelle. Il est un très important artiste 
contemporain.
The New York Times
Tudor Banus nous montre des gravures, des dessins et des peintures dans un étrange coloris de vieux cuir, de nèfles et de marrons glacés. Tout cela a, dès à présent, une odeur de musée, de chef-d'oeuvre retrouvé, de cabinet de magicien, et d'antre d'alchimiste. Il y a là une sorte de délire contrôlé;, une perfection du dessin qui défie la critique, un délire de dérision qui s'exprime par des situations cocasses. Son art 
insolite et fantastique s'appuie sur un réalisme exigeant et ne cesse de nous occuper le souvenir.
La Libre Belgique
Les lecteurs de Marianne ne sont pas les seuls à s'attarder aux illustrations très fouillées de Tudor Banus. Ceux du Monde, de l'Express, du Point, du New York Times, de Die Zeit sont aussi frappés par ses dessins au trait acide et aux couleurs chaudes, qui donnent toujours un arrière-plan étrange, baroque, inquiétant aux événements et 
figures d'actualité. Ce qui fait qu'avec Tudor Banus, l'actualité n'est plus seulement d'actualité. C'est que notre illustrateur est avant tout un peintre, comme on peut s'en aviser à l'occasion de cette exposition. Un peintre très bien formé aux subtilités de son art et qui, pouvant tout faire de sa main, du plus précis au plus planant, nous rappelle qu'on ne voit bien l'ici et maintenant qu'avec l'oeil de l'imagination.
Jean-Philippe Domecq
On connaît depuis longtemps l'illustrateur de presse Tudor Banus, virtuose graphique à l'inventivité époustouflante qui collabore avec les titres les plus prestigieux de la presse internationale (en France, notamment Le Monde). On sait moins que Banus est peintre, peut-être faute d'occasions de voir son travail. En voici une qu'il ne faut absolument pas manquer : l'effet de surprise est garanti. On ne saurait classer cet artiste inclassable, qui mélange les genres, les thèmes et les styles avec une jubilation visible. On ne saurait pas davantage interpréter ces images complexes, saturées, montrant des nus qui n'ont rien d'académique et beaucoup de créatures qui semblent venues tout 
droit de l'inconscient, à moins qu'il ne s'agisse de réminiscences d'une culture hétéroclite, archaïque et futuriste à la fois, terrifiante aussi bien qu'humoristique. En essayant d'exprimer l'état de sidération dans lequel est inévitablement plongé l'observateur des tableaux de Tudor Banus, je m'aperçois que tout se passe comme si je voulais décrire l'indescriptible Jérôme Bosch. Du peintre du Tryptique du jardin des délices, Banus n'a pas seulement hérité son goût du grouillement formel, mais aussi son pouvoir de transmutation. De l'organique au mécanique, du végétal à l'animal, des passerelles incongrues sont sans cesse jetées. Des concréations minérales insolites poussent chez Banus comme chez Bosch. Visuellement les similitudes sont frappantes, mais philosophiquement elles ne paraissent pas moins troublantes. On parierait que Tudor Banus est un pessimiste qui n'a guère d'illusions quant à l'humanité. Bosch la voyait s'acheminant, sur une charette de foin, vers l'enfer éternel. Tudor Banus l'accompagne dans sa marche vers une inoxérable apocalypse dont, de temps à autre, il a la force de nous faire rire. Ce n'est pas la moindre de ses qualités variées et déconcertantes. 
Jean-Luc Chalumeau, critique d'art (février 2005)
Smart specs!
Wow! Just think how much easier life could be with a pair of these! I'd put them on your Christmas list if I were you! This from the BBC:
Smart spectacles aid translation | |||
Spectacles that can provide subtitles have been created by hi-tech firm NEC. Resembling glasses but lacking lenses, the headset uses a tiny projector to display images on a user's retina. NEC said it planned a version that used real-time translation to provide subtitles for a conversation between people lacking a common language. The firm said the gadget, dubbed Tele Scouter, was intended for sales people or employees dealing with inquiries from customers. NEC said the Tele Scouter was intended to be a business tool that could aid sales staff who would have information about a client's buying history beamed into their eye during a conversation. But, it said, it could also be put to a more exotic use as a translation aid. In this scenario the microphone on the headset picks up the voices of both people in a conversation, pipes it through translation software and voice-to-text systems and then sends the translation back to the headset.
At the same time as a user hears a translation, they would also get text subtitles beamed onto the retina. "You can keep the conversation flowing," NEC spokesman Takayuki Omino told AFP at a Tokyo trade show where the device was unveiled. Mr Omino said the system could also be used for confidential talks that would be compromised by the use of a human translator. NEC said the Tele Scouter would be launched in Japan in November, 2010 but would initially lack the translation feature. A version that can provide subtitles would follow in 2011, it said. When it goes on sale, a batch of 30 headsets will cost about 7.5m yen (£50,000). The cost does not include the price of the translation tools and software. | |||
05 novembre 2009
The Pig Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Dear Everyone,
This whole 'flu' issue is becoming way too complicated....what are we supposed to think? There's H1N1, Novel and Swine Flu viruses and noone seems to know which is which or whether they are all the same or...which one has a curly tail and a snout...
So, here's some info to help you sort it out once and for all from Wiki Q&A:
- All swine flus and H1N1 viruses are forms (sub-types) of the Type A Influenza.
- There are "H1N1" influenza viruses that are not "swine flu", some types of the seasonal flu are actually also H1N1.
- All the different viruses that are called swine flu viruses are of the H1N1 sub-type.
- Swine Flu is a nick name used for:
- "Novel" H1N1 (the 2009 pandemic flu),
- the original H1N1 in humans from the 1930's,
- the "Swine Flu" from the 70's, 80's, and,
- the H1N1 virus that caused flu in pigs from which the other strains evolved.
- The original Swine Flu in pigs contained only swine/hog genetic material and was only infective from pig to pig.
- H1N1 is the name for the original Swine Flu that mutated so that humans started getting it from pigs decades before the 2009 pandemic (in the 1930's). It could be passed pig to pig, pig to human (rarely when humans were in very close proximity to pigs as farmers or workers in pig farms), and human to pig (also rarely), then human to human even less often. That strain contains both swine and human genetic material.
- "Novel H1N1" is the name coined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the flu of the 2009 pandemic (see above and below in related questions for other names it is being called).
- The Novel H1N1 (now also called "A-H1N1/09" by the World Health Organization-WHO) mutated from the prior strains and contains genetic material from pigs, from humans, and from birds (Avian Flu). It is called "Novel" because it is unique and a completely new strain of virus never seen until just before the pandemic. It was created through what is called a "triple reassortant" process (sometimes also called "triple reassortment". Some people also call it quadruple reassortant, which is probably more appropriate.) It means, in this case, that within the pigs, the virus underwent a mutation that combined the three different species' genetic material (because it contains two types of the pig viruses, is why some call it quadruple).
- "A-H1N1/09" is infective from pig to pig, pig to human, human to pig, and human to human. It is possible, but not yet proven, that it could also pass to and from birds in some very crowded conditions of pigs and birds or humans, pigs, and birds such as might occur on crowded farm facilities of ducks or geese kept with hogs and also with human workers all together in over-crowded and unsanitary conditions.
So now you know...whichever flu is flying, if you want my profesh medical advice, don't forget to drink plenty of palinka which will kill off any self-respecting bacteria in seconds - oh and while you're at it, maybe put a little behind your ears to ward off potential bugs...and save me a glass. Noroc!
04 novembre 2009
More on Herta Muller
The Passport and Nadirs by Herta Müller
The Nobel prizewinner has yet to convince Tibor Fischer of her artistry
- The Guardian, Saturday 24 October 2009
The Passport
by Herta Müller, translated by Martin Chalmers 99pp, Serpent's Tail, £7.99
Nadirs
by Herta Müller, translated by Sieglinde Lug 126pp, Nebraska, £9.99
I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who grew up in Ceausescu's Romania. In Hungary, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, even in East Germany, things weren't great for the majority, but if you behaved, you could have peace and a modicum of comfort. Not in Romania. Behaving didn't help. By the 1980s, it was a very poor, nasty and strange place where typewriters had to be registered and where, once, with one packet of cigarettes as a bribe, I managed to open an entire closed restaurant in the centre of Bucharest.
It was miserable for everyone except the ruling elite, and it was doubly miserable for the minorities, the two million Hungarians and the Germans, from whose ranks came this year's Nobel prizewinner for literature, Herta Müller. Ceausescu operated a mild form of ethnic cleansing, selling his Germans to West Germany and making conditions so tough for the Hungarians that many opted for an easier life across the border in Budapest. Müller and her fellow writer and husband, Richard Wagner, quit Romania in 1987.
Two of Müller's books are available in English at the moment – a "novel", The Passport (first published in 1989), and Nadirs, a short story collection. Another novel, The Land of Green Plums, is due to be reissued by Granta next month.
Of all the writers who've won the Nobel prize, Müller must have the most rudimentary prose style. The citation from the Nobel committee refers to the "frankness of prose". With the possible exception of Dan Brown or Barbara Taylor Bradford, prose doesn't come any franker than this. Sentences such as "The plums were green and ripe" or "Windisch shivers" don't occur as a punchy contrast to sesquipedalian descriptions or Proustian concatenations of clauses. This is Müller's staple fare, the basic building block, indeed almost the only building block she deigns to use.
Half of her sentences are under 10 words long, and few are over 14. If concision and clarity of expression is your pleasure, Müller delivers to the front door. You could fit three of her stories into this review. The short story collection, The Passport and her Impac award-winning The Land of Green Plums all focus on village life in 1970s Romania, and often read like Thomas Hardy abridged for six-year-olds. If her work had been handed to me in a creative writing class I'd be pleading for the use of a subordinate clause every now and then.
Presumably there is something going on in the German original that gives Müller's words greater appeal and colour. I know enough intelligent, cultured Germans who admire her work to suspect that something significant is being shed in the rendering.
The short story collection Nadirs was Müller's first book, published in 1982 in Romania in a "censored" form, and I think I can guess which bits fell by the wayside. The official policy towards minorities under Ceausescu was love and nurture, so work was published in German and Hungarian, though the officially sanctioned stuff was usually tosh or full abasement sycophancy to the "Conductor".
Some of the stories in Nadirs (although texts might be a better term) are so matter of fact and so inconsequential that I read them three or four times to confirm I wasn't missing something. "The Swabian Bath" is about a Swabian family having a bath on a Saturday night. As it's 70s Romania, the whole family uses the same tub and water: "The little gray rolls of Mother, of Father, of Grandma, and of Grandpa are whirling down the drain." I can imagine that, as a performance piece, read aloud, this might have some musicality and life, but it slumps pointlessly on the page. Similarly, "The Intervillage Bus" is the obiter dicta of passengers on an inter-village bus.
There are also pieces that are more playful and indeed abstruse. I had to read "Workday", which closes the collection, several times because of its topsy-turvy, almost reverse-time account of getting to the office, with surreal lines such as "three stops before getting on, I get off".
The Passport is a 90-page novel about a miller, Windisch, a Swab, or ethnic German, who applies for a passport to leave Romania. That's all in the way of plot or narrative impetus. The style is as clipped as that of Nadirs and the setting is the same: rural Romania. The vignettes are reminiscent of Nadirs but linked together by the wandering Windisch. The original German title of the book was "Man is a large pheasant in the world" (a Romanian proverb which underlines man's status as prey for fate), which better captures the growth of the poetic, oracular elements in Müller's writing. If you don't know why there are Swabs in the Banat, Saxons in Transylvania and Hungarians in both regions, a lot of this won't make much sense to you.
Müller was in her mid-30s when she left Romania, and although Romania has remained her main preoccupation, I find it a cerebral, processed Romania, more art than likeness (not that there's anything wrong with that). The Hungarian writer Gyorgy Dragoman left Romania as a child, but if you want a book that replicates the grim lunacy of Ceausescu's reign, his novel The White King is the one to go for.
This from Adevarul... for shame.
Timişoara: Cartea Hertei Müller a fost tăiată în bucăţi la televizor, în direct
Un prezentator de televiziune din Germania a aruncat cartea Hertei Muller într-o găleată cu sânge, după ce mai întâi a tăiat-o cu un cuţit de carne.
Herta Muller a câştigat Premiul Nobel pentru literatură. FOTO: MEDIAFAX
Citiţi şi:
- Der Spiegel: Herta Müller este "grav bolnavă"
- La Cluj, Hertha Müller a ajuns de la reduceri la bestseller
- Herta Müller, în oglinda criticilor
- Mărturiile fostului soţ al Hertei Müller
Vezi o GALERIE FOTO cu volumul Hertei Muller, tăiat în bucăţi în direct la postul german de televiziune.
Omul de televiziune Harald Schmidt, un fel de Jay Lenno al Germaniei, şi-a bătut joc ieri de Herta Müller în direct. „Harald Schmidt nu se sperie de nimic, nici măcar de Premiul Nobel pentru Literatură. În emisiunea sa de ieri, cel mai recent bestseller al Hertei Müller a sfârşit între resturi de carne de vită şi sânge, toate aduse dintr-o măcelărie“, titrează astăzi cotidianul german Bild.
Asemănată cu Dracula
După ce cartea a fost tăiată cu o maşinărie specială destinată oaselor, bucăţile au fost aruncate şi amestecate cu resturi de animale. Pe toată durata show-ului, una dintre animatoarele din emisiune au purtat o perucă asemănătoare cu părul Hertei Müller, iar Schmidt a arătat fotografii cu câştigătoarea Nobelului.
Indirect, prezentatorul a comparat-o pe autoare chiar cu Dracula. „Ea vine din acelaşi loc ca şi Bela Lugosi“, a spus comediantul.
Herta Müller a câştigat Premiul Nobel pentru Literatură săptămâna trecută. Scriitoarea germană s-a născut în România, în localitatea Niţchidorf din Timiş, şi a plecat în Germania în anul 1987, în urma presiunilor regimului comunist.
Fotografii de la măcelărirea cărţii Hertei Muller. Sursa: Bild.
MAI CITIŢI:
- Herta Müller, de la reduceri la bestseller
- Timişoara: Colega de clasă a Hertei Muller îşi aminteşte că scriitoarea era foarte ordonată
- Americanii încep să devină interesaţi de opera Hertei Muller
- Herta Muller: "Dictatura m-a determinat să scriu"
- Ceauşescu a vândut un Nobel
- Timişoara: Herta Muller încă are o relaţie tensionată cu România
03 novembre 2009
Forged Identity...
From Jurnalul National:
Forged Identity – highway to EU
15/10/2009
Fake identity cards can easily be obtained in Romania and Bulgaria, and many illegal migrants use them to reach Western Europe.
By Adrian Mogos in Bucharest, Dobrych, Byala, Timisoara, Aachen and Berlin
June 2009, undercovere voting for elections for European Parliament
For a few hundred euros, I obtained a new Romanian identity complete with a new name of Turkish origin. For the next few months I was no longer Adrian Mogos, but Murad Alin Erdogan from Timişoara. Why choose a Turkish name? Because most illegal immigrants crossing Romania on their way to Western Europe are Turkish and I wanted to follow in their footsteps.
It was not difficult to obtain a fake identity card, nor to use it, even though the penalty for such crimes in Romania ranges from three months to three years in prison. I simply used my contacts within the underworld.
Early this June, I tested out my fake ID, to see if Murad Erdogan would be able to vote in Romania's European Union elections. I went to a polling station in Bucharest, filming undercover. Nobody noticed anything and no officials in the polling station questioned my identity.
I did not intend to vote, as this would have been a criminal offence, so I ticked all the candidates, knowing my voting slip would be registered null and invalid.
Days later, I headed to Germany to see if Murad Erdogan could start a new life there. I encountered no problems or any questions about my documents while in Germany and The Netherlands.
Finally I reached Berlin, a place where anyone can blend in. I had no connections there, but felt confident I could set myself up in Kreuzberg, the colourful home of many immigrants in the capital.
With almost no money, it was time to make Murad Erdogan a respectable citizen by getting his legal documentation into proper order. First of all, he needed an address. Wandering the streets, I spied a small placard on a building reading "Stellplätze zu Vermieten" [parking spaces for rent]. Thinking that a building with vacant parking spaces must also have apartments for rent, I noted the name and phone number of the company that owned the building, Ernst G Hachmann Gmbh.
On June 29, armed with this information, I headed for Kreuzberg city hall to obtain an official document registering me at that address. The municipal official I met at no point sought proof that I possessed a contract with the building's owner. In spite of my poor German, and the fact that I was using only my fake ID, I was registered by the city as living at the address I had chosen within minutes.
his was not the end of Murad Erdogan's quest for a new life in Berlin, however. If he was to achieve anything, he would need a bank account, and so I stepped into the first bank I encountered, a branch of Berliner Sparkasse.
The bank manager was happy to help out after seeing the registration form concerning Erdogan's new address. After a few questions about why I wished to open an account, account number 6014519775 was ready for use.
Next I needed a telephone. Using the same registration form I had obtained from the city hall, I bought a small mobile phone with five euros of credit for only nine euros. In Germany, every SIM card must be registered in a customer's name, so mine was registered under "Murad Alin Erdogan".
Finally, I visited Schufa, the German credit information agency that determines whether a person is economically active and financially trustworthy. After giving the registration form from the city hall, the bank account details and 7.80 euros, a member of staff handed me all the papers I needed.
Thus, in the space of only two days, I had obtained an official address, opened a bank account and received proof that Murad Erdogan was a financially reliable resident in Germany.
A bearded old man I saw in the Schufa office was less lucky, and didn't get the papers he needed. "You don't have the registration form from the city hall," a clerk told this elderly German citizen.
31 octobre 2009
Happy Hallowe'en!
Check out how they celebrate Hallowe'en in Manhattan!
30 octobre 2009
Nelly Sachs
My discovery of Roumanian-German poets has been fascinating so far: Herta Muller, Oscar Pastior, Paul Celan. Celan led me to Nelly Sachs, who wasn't Roumanian at all, but pure German...and Jewish, so I veer off course for a post, simply because I cannot help it. Her story touched me very much and I would like to share it with you. Perhaps it is no different from that of many German Jews born and growing up in the pre-war era, her fear like anyone's in her position...and yet she became a Nobel prize for Literature winner in 1966 despite (or maybe because of) her ghosts, her terrors, her paranoia and her repetitive and deteriorating mental health that followed her through the entirety of her life. After the war, her fragility became more and more evident and the death of her mother brought with it a crashing down of her sensitivity, breakdowns ebbing and flowing like waves on a shore, leaving her more alone than ever. Her suffrance was that of the pain and guilt of a survivor. Her profound chagrin for the innocent dead gave her a voice on behalf of all those other voices disappeared up the chimneys of Auschwitz. She and Celan had that in common...Celan was a fatal victim of it, resulting in suicide, drowning himself in the Seine (see post 26/10).
Escaping from Germany to Sweden with her mother in 1940 with the indispensable help of a dear and well-connected friend in Germany and her friendship by correspondence with Selma Lagerlöf, she continued to suffer...she was fifty years old when finally they arrived in Stockholm, too late to meet Selma who had organised her visa from her deathbed. Nelly was a washerwoman to make ends meet and then, having conquered the Swedish language, she became a translator of Swedish poetry to her mother-tongue. Her style had changed completely. The romanticism was replaced by nightmarish horrors.
Please visit this beautiful site for more information.
Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:
'Born as Leonie Sachs in Schöneberg, Berlin in 1891, she was educated at home due to frail health. She showed early signs of talent as a dancer, but her protective parents did not encourage her to pursue a profession. She grew up as a very sheltered, introverted young woman and never married. She pursued an extensive correspondence, and was a friend of Selma Lagerlöf. As the Nazis took power, she became increasingly terrified, at one point losing the power of speech, as she would remember in verse: "When the great terror came/I fell dumb." Sachs fled with her aged mother to Sweden in 1940. Her friendship with Lagerlöf had saved her life and that of her mother when shortly before her own death Lagerlöf intervened with the Swedish royal family to secure their release from Germany. Sachs and her mother finally escaped on the last airplane flight to leave Nazi Germany for Sweden, a week before Sachs was scheduled to report to a concentration camp. Every member of her family with the exception of herself and her mother were killed in concentration camps.
Living in a tiny two-room apartment in Stockholm, Sachs cared alone for her mother for many years, and supported their existence by translations between Swedish and German. After her mother's death, Sachs suffered several nervous breakdowns characterized by hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions of persecution by Nazis, and she spent a number of years in a mental institution. She continued to write even while hospitalised. She eventually recovered well enough to live on her own again, though her stability would always be fragile. Her worst breakdown was ostensibly precipitated by hearing German speech during a trip to Switzerland to accept a literary prize. However, she maintained a forgiving attitude toward a younger generation of Germans, and corresponded with many German-speaking writers of the postwar period, including Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Ingeborg Bachmann.
In the context of the Shoah, her deep friendship with "brother" poet Paul Celan is often noted today. When Sachs met Celan she was embroiled in a long dispute with Finnish-Jewish composer Moses Pergament's musical adaptation of her stage play Eli: Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels. Her relationship to Pergament became entangled with her paranoia, with Sachs repeatedly accusing Pergament of not believing her delusions of persecution. In Celan, she found someone who appeared to believe her. Sachs was first institutionalized shortly after her only visit to Celan.
In 1961 she became the inaugural winner of the Nelly Sachs Prize, a literary prize awarded biennially by the city of Dortmund, and named in her honour. When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature on her birthday, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people."
Incidentally, I should tell you that Nelly didn't keep her prize money from the Nobel...she gave half away to the poor and the other half to the great friend so instrumental in her escape to Sweden from Germany. See Amazing Grace for more on Nelly. Tortured by memories and years of living in the cold fists of fear, she was the voice of those who could no longer bear witness of mans inhumanity to man... She was their requiem.
photos from Wikipedia
28 octobre 2009
Theatre Night!
Bravo, bravo, city of my heart! White Night at the Theatre! What a fantastic idea. Click here for the programme of what's on where, curtesy of Nine O'Clock. You're pretty much spoiled for choice though I would be pulled between the Comedy Theatre with Malaele's "I Am Blind" because I love him so much and adore the poetry of Nichita Stanescu, and the National as "The Clouds" is such a great play, directed by Dan Tudor.
It is an enigma to me. How can such a city offer cultural ideas with one hand and then allow the destruction of its heritage in bricks and mortar with the other....? An utter paradox.
Please comment! Tell me where you've been and what you've seen. Pix if you can! Let's show everyone what a fabulously cultural hub Bucharest is!
Love, Sarah
26 octobre 2009
One thing remained - language.
Dear Everyone,
Nothing can tear me away from the texts of Herta Muller. What an incredible writer she is. How very scarred and tortured are her thoughts, how cruel her past and how courageous her determination and drive. The very fact that she is alive today is nothing short of miraculous. I know she annoyed the Roumanian authorities with her openness, her frankness. As a result, she was scandalously tainted with lies and slurs on her reputation that many people continue to believe even today, so many years on. Perhaps she brought it all on herself as has been said many times. But woe is the day when we, as human beings, lose the freedom of speech and an even bigger woe when we lose the courage to raise our eyes and our voices to condemn something as wicked as the communist regime, of dictatorship, of terror, persecution, umpteen arrests, beatings, rape, cold, hunger and deportation. When we can no longer find the strength nor the courage to shout our rebellion, to cry 'no', to scream our refusal to dance the steps of such a shameful quadrille.... And Herta Muller, despite everything she suffered - and My God, how appallingly she suffered indeed - she never ever stopped voicing her opinions, standing up for her people and condemning the agonies of her country under the thick grey blanket of Ceausescu's regime. For all that, I cannot tolerate the things I read which are critical of her. Any Roumanian who writes or says, 'huh, did she really suffer that much? Things were not that bad...' well, all I can say is that they themselves are extremely suspect. Their own pasts during the regime become immediately questionable. Hands off my Herta who has suffered enough. You only need to look at her face to see the pain in her eyes, the hunted look. Read from 'Everything I Own I Carry With Me', if you will. One cannot write like that if one hasn't lived the things she did.
Herta Muller has taken me on a voyage. A voyage of Romanian-German literature. You are already familiar with Oskar Pastior, so let me share Paul Celan with you. This below from Kirjasto:
Paul Celan was born Paul Antschel, the only child of German-speaking Jewish parents in Cernauti, earlier Czernowitz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Chernovtsy, Ukraine. Bucovina was relatively free from religious discrimination; nearly half of the inhabitants of Czernowitz were Jews – the city was called "Little Vienna." Celan's parents spoke German at home and with his mother, Fritzi, Celan shared a passion for German poetry; especially the influence of the Romantic tradition from Novalis to Rilke is seen in his early verse. At the age of six, Celan entered a liberal, German-language elementary school and he was then sent to a Hebrew school, the Safah Ivriah. After his bar mitzvah in 1933, Celan joined an anti-Fascist youth group, which published a mimeographed Marxist magazine called Red Student.
Celan studied medicine in Paris in 1938 and then Romance philology at the University of Czernowitz. The Russians invaded Bucovina in 1940 and two years later the Nazis started to deport Jews to labour camps. His parents refused to go into hiding and they were taken to death camps, where they died shortly afterwards. According to some sources, Celan's father died of typhus and his mother was killed by a shot in the back of the neck because she was too exhausted to work after months of forced labour. During World War II Celan, a Jew, was sent to a forced-labour camp, where he worked until heavy snow forced it to close. Celan managed to survive the Holocaust, although he was imprisoned until 1943.
When the Russian Army reinvaded his homeland in 1944, Celan went to Bucharest, where he continued reading such great German lyric poets as Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke. A year after receiving the news of his parent's deaths, Celan wrote: ''And can you bear, Mother, as once on a time, / the gentle, the German, the pain-laden rhyme?'' Celan had lost his mother, and his German mother tongue, the Muttersprache, reminded him of the loss constantly. Like many Central European Jews, Celan had viewed Germany as a nation of writers and thinkers.
Celan changed his name to Paul Aurel, then to Paul Ancel, and finally to Paul Celan. In Bucharest he worked as a translators and editor at an publishing company. In 1947 he went to Vienna and immigrated next year to Paris, where he became a teacher of German language at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In 1952 Celan married the graphic artist Gisèle Lestrange, a non-Jew. They had met in Paris in 1951 and during the following 19 years they wrote over 700 letters. The correspondence, edited by their son Eric Celan, was published in 2002. Celan's and Ingeborg Bachmann's POETISCHE KORRESPONDENZEN appeared in 1997. Gisèle Celan-Lestrange knew about their love affair, but although it caused her much pain, she eventually accepted it.
Celan established his reputation first in West Germany. His first poems started to appear in the periodicals in the late 1940s. His second book, MOHN UND GEDACHTNIS (Poppy and Memories, 1952), which included Todesfugue, gained wide acclaim and made the author as an important poet of the Holocaust.
Todesfugue, Celan's most famous poem, describes with nightmarish, surrealistic images the Jewish experience under Nazism. It begins with the lines (tr. by Jerome Rothenberg) ''Black milk of morning we drink at you at dusktime / we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at night / we drink and drink / we scoop out a grave in the sky where it's roomy to lie /' (Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends / wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sic nachts...)
Death is a gang-boss aus Deutchland his eye is blue
he hits you with leaden bullets his aim is true
there's a man in this house your golden hair Margareta
he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky
he cultivates snakes he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
(from 'A Death Fugue')
Celan's friends René Char, Nelly Sachs, and other poets felt the restrictions placed on them by their identity, the "death-bringing speech", and by the history that the Holocaust represented. As Celan once said, language must be set free from history. "I went with my very being toward language," he once said. In the 1950s Celan's work was becoming known for its broken syntax and radical minimalism, expressing his perception of the shattered world in which he lived. Celan concentrated on transforming silence into words, or circumscribing its boundaries. When he received the Bremen Prize for German literature he explained: "Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through." DIE NIEMANDSROSE (1963) marked Celan's return to the theme of the meaningless of human suffering, in which the "clubfoot of the gods" stumbles over mountains of corpses.
Ein Nichts
waren wir, sind wir, werden
wir bleiben, blühend:
die Nichts-, die
Niemandsrose.
(from 'Psalm')
When Claire Goll, married to the poet Yvan Goll, accused Celan of plagiarising some of her husband's work, Celan had a nervous breakdown. He had translated some of Goll's poems but the accusations lived from the 1950s to 1960s. He had also translated works from such writers as Cocteau, Michaux, Mandelstam, Ungaretti, Pessoa, Rimbaud, Valéry, Char, du Bouchet, and Dupin. In 1960 Celan received Georg Büchner Prize. He suffered from bouts of depression throughout the 1960s. "Celan is sick – hopelessly," said the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who met the poet in 1967. Heidegger had joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and after the war he was forbidden to teach for some years. He never openly apologised for his past. Celan had studied Heidegger's major work, Being and Time (1927) thoroughly and in 1957 he had wanted to send him the poem 'Schlieren'. Heidegger had followed Celan's work since the 1950s and had long wished to meet him. After reading at Freiburg University, Celan visited Heidegger's famous cabin in Todtnauberg, but what they talked about is unknown. Celan's entry in the logbook was ambiguous: "Into the cabin logbook, with a view toward the Brunnenstern, with hope of a coming word in the heart." However, Celan left Freiburg in high spirits, and wrote the poem 'Todtnauberg' with the lines: "a hope, today, / of a thinking man's / coming (un- / tarryingly coming) / word / in the heart."
A year before his death, Celan visited Israel. Celan's relationship with Judaism was complicated. He drew from the heritage of European Symbolism, but his work was rooted in the Jewish-Hasidic tradition. He often brought Jewish themes into his work, and also wrote some ''pained scrawlings'' in Hebrew, apparently during a month-long psychiatric stay in 1965. Celan died by his own hand: he drowned himself in the Seine on May 1, in 1970, at the age of 49. In his pocket calendar he had written: "Depart Paul." Before his death Heidegger had planned to guide him through the Hölderlin landscape of the Upper Danube. The three books Celan left unfinished at his death appeared in 1986 under the title Last Poems.
A Death Fugue
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
drink it and drink it
we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there
A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and walks from the house the stars glitter he whistles his dogs up
he whistles his Jews out and orders a grave to be dug in the earth
he commands us strike up for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink in the mornings at noon we drink you at nightfall
drink you and drink you
A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
Your ashen hair Shulamith we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there
He shouts stab deeper in earth you there and you others you sing and you play
he grabs at the iron in his belt and swings it and blue are his eyes
stab deeper your spades you there and you others play on for the dancing
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at nightfall
we drink you at noon in the mornings we drink you at nightfall
drink you and drink you
a man in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents
He shouts play sweeter death's music death comes as a master from Germany
he shouts stroke darker the strings and as smoke you shall climb to the sky
then you'll have a grave in the clouds it is ample to lie there
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death comes as a master from Germany
we drink you at nightfall and morning we drink you and drink you
a master from Germany death comes with eyes that are blue
with a bullet of lead he will hit in the mark he will hit you
a man in the house your golden hair Margarete
he hunts us down with his dogs in the sky he gives us a grave
he plays with the serpents and dreams death comes as a master from Germany
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith
Autumn in Hamden
Autumn in Connecticut perhaps doesn't stop my heart quite like it does in the mountains of Transylvania, but nevertheless, the Nutmeg State is a truely beautiful place to be as the trees change robes from rich green to myriads of autumnal hue. Around every corner, every bend, we gasp, we sigh, and I yearn for yet more breathtaking explosions of colour way up there in the hills, sensational splatterings of vibrant gold 
against azure 
sky, overwhelmingly perfect sunsets...
News of Teodor Maries from Ziua.ro
Presedintele Asociatiei 21 Decembrie,Teodor Maries, renunta la greva foamei | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
16 octombrie, 18:12 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Presedintele Asociatiei 21 Decembrie, Teodor Maries, a declarat vineri, pentru NewsIn, ca a hotarat sa renunte la greva foamei, pentru ca el considera ca perioada scursa de pe 4 august este suficienta si este multumit ca a primit documentele din dosarul Revolutiei, anunta, vineri, NewsIn. "E destul cat am stat in greva foamei", a spus Maries, care nu a primit un raspuns ferm de la Serviciul Roman de Informatii (SRI) si Serviciul de Telecomunicatii Speciale (STS) privind desecretizarea unor acte din dosar. Revolutionarul a precizat ca luni va merge la Parchetul General pentru a mai lua documente, pentru care Consiliul National pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitatii (CNSAS) a fost de acord cu desecretizarea. Presedintele Asociatiei 21 Decembrie, Teodor Maries, a declarat marti, ca a primit de la Parchetul General toate copiile documentelor nesecretizate din dosarul Revolutiei, dar ca va ramane in greva foamei pana cand SRI va raspunde la cererea de declasificare a celorlalte documente. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Z.O From ziua.ro | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
