In Unequal Mirrors

Abstract

Sorkin continuedfrom previous page Ruxandra Cesereanu's intense neurotic projections in Lunacies (2004), Saviana Stänescu's brash theatricality in Diary ofa Clone (2003), Magda Cârneci's mystical de/reconstruction of high modernism and postmodernism in Chaosmos (2006), Mariana Marin's bleak, despairing solitude in Paper Children (2006), Virgil Mihaiu's jazzy eroticism in Census of Epiphanies (1999), and Mihai Ursachi's prophetic malice and tease in The March to the Stars (2006). Currently, I'm at work with co-translators on another Cesereanu book, The Crusader-Woman; I'm trying to place a volume of Romanian Roma tales, The Lost Country, by Lumínica Mihai Cioabä; and I'm beginning to explore the powerful and disparate poetry of the post-2000 generation of poets, who have spent the majority of their lives without communism . Adam J. Sorkin has translatedandpublished in English more than thirty important Romanian poets. And Now for the Totally Young... Ioana Cistelecan There is always a stubborn, repetitive motif stuck somewhere in the back of our minds: "What is the use of poetry nowadays in our pragmatic society ?" Why should we continue to write and read poems, do they keep us warm, do they pay the bills, or do they at least make us somehow complete? The publishing houses are still printing everyone while the public is being suffocated by the amount and variety of poetry volumes. Although every native ofour bizarre country is supposed to have inherited the gift of composing rhymes, a few, the chosen ones, possess the essential inner ability of offering substance and content to their lyrics so that they be taken seriously as writers. Two opposite poles are balancing themselves here: first of all, we have a subtle, deeply human organ ofsensitivity to poetry—and this belongs to both authors and readers—and then we have every poet's large vanity. These are forever to be found in an unstable and also frail balance since the third coordinate pressure is the well-circumscribed expectancy-horizon, strongly connected to a sense of temporal and social proximity. Another "made in Romania" literary practice is the everlasting polemic and confrontation between generations. Postmodernism bewitched us in the 60s and the 70s, and a new, fresh literary wave emerged. The writers of the 80s found that the postmodernist fashion was embraced to such an extent that they needed to do battle. In the 90s, writers knocked on the precious gates ofour literature, and significant debate developed, initiated by the literary review Echinox in Cluj. The harsh results revealed the flaws of the postmodernist generation; only a few talented voices out of it managed to survive, and these were appropriated by the youngest authors, who proclaimed themselves the "the millenary generation." Among them, Robert §erban and Dan Mircea Cipariu are both accomplished authors, literary prizewinners, quite dynamic and successful, though still not fully accepted by some critics. The pattern ofcontroversy functions extremely well within the Romanian artistic sphere, and there is already an opposition in the making by even younger poets. Some of the perpetual bones of contention are: the weakness of not being bom in Bucharest; the ongoing rivalry between the supremacy of the center and the mutiny of the province; the inferiority complex inside an enfeebled mentality that is still upsetting our fragile interiors, still forcing us to seek recognition in the big city, still blinding our own ability to acknowledge a simple reality—wherever you are, there is the center. The millenarists are thus quarreling among themselves in order to overthrow a ubiquitous enemy : the 80s writers. Diminishing their own merits and accomplishments, the youngsters are merely looking for the approval and literary acceptance of the 80s generation, behaving as if they were nothing but disobedient children. And so they essentially are, but also smart, brave, open minded, spectacular, and playful, because in their attitudes and writings those who really matter as poets are fresh and new. They love and hate each other continuously, analyzing each other's works, commenting on each other's concepts and contradictions, turning and returning to each other's texts, consequently establishing a lively new rhythm in our vivid literature. The "millenarists" are spitting out in theirpoems...