Prefata de Simona Popescu Fisa de dramaturg de Ion Cocora
Exact in acelasi timp • Florenta sint eu • Poate Eleonora... • Insula • Ceasornicaria Taus • Nepotul lui Rameau
„Sa scrii despre Gellu Naum este o impietate. Sa scrii ceva elaborat, gindit, modificat despre cel care si-a luat scrisul din stele si l-a trecut asa cum era pe hirtie este un nonsens. Gellu Naum a fost si este pentru mine cea mai vie si mai elocventa forma a suprarealismului.” (Alexandru Tocilescu)
„Operatiunea pe care Gellu Naum a facut-o in Nepotul lui Rameau as putea sa o denumesc o transformare subcutanee a textului. Fara sa piarda nimic din structura foarte complexa a unui text filozofic. Fara sa altereze complexitatea cu care exprima personajele. Gellu Naum a minuit cu o extraordinara intelegere literara cuvintele, transformind un text care era menit sa fie citit intr-unul care poate fi inteles fiind auzit. Operatiune de o extrema subtilitate si delicatete.” (David Esrig)
„Scena lui Gellu Naum e scena virtualitatilor care coexista si se realizeaza simultan in paralel, e suma istoriilor posibile care isi trag unitatea (fiindca scena e totusi una, una singura) din capacitatea noastra de a participa la ele, de a juca in toate planurile.” (Vlad Zografi)
„N-a scris ca un dramaturg, ci ca un suprarealist. Gellu Naum clatina cu nonsalanta tabieturile dramaturgice de rigoare, polemizind cu popularul comic sau cu la fel de popularul, in fond, tragic, inlocuindu-le cu umorul negru care le contine, a rebours si exploziv, pe amindoua, la care se adauga un frison poetic.” (Simona Popescu)
Gelu Naum was a prominent Romanian poet, dramatist, novelist, children's writer, and translator. He is remembered as the founder of the Romanian Surrealist group. The artist Lyggia Naum, his wife, was the inspiration and main character in his 1985 novel Zenobia.
Born in Bucharest, he was the son of the poet Andrei Naum (who had been drafted in World War I and died during the Battle of Mărăşeşti) and his wife Maria Naum née Rosa Gluck. In 1933, he began studying philosophy at the University of Bucharest. In 1938, he left for France, where he continued his studies at the University of Paris. He took his PhD diploma with a thesis on the scholastic philosopher Pierre Abelard.
In 1936 (the year when he published his first book), Naum met Victor Brauner, who became his close friend and who later introduced him to André Breton and his Surrealist circle in Paris.
In 1941, he helped create the Bucharest group of Surrealists (which also included Gherasim Luca, Paul Păun, Dolfi Trost, and Virgil Teodorescu). Naum was drafted into Romanian Army during World War II and served on the Eastern Front after the invasion of the Soviet Union (see Romania during World War II). Marked by his wartime experience, he was discharged in 1944, after he had fallen ill.
In December 1947, the Surrealist group succumbed to the vicissitudes of postwar Soviet occupation and successful Communist takeover of Romania's government. As Socialist realism had officially become Romania's cultural policy, he could only publish books for children (out of which the two books with Apolodor were reissued several times). Although he published several books in the line of Socialist realism, which he reneged on afterwards, he never stopped writing Surrealist poems, such as the 1958 poem composed of several parts Heraclitus (published in the 1968 volume Athanor) or the esoteric manuscript The Way of the Snake, written in 1948–1949 and published after his death, in 2002.
Between 1950 and 1953, he taught philosophy at the Agronomic Institute in Bucharest while working also as a translator. He translated works by Samuel Beckett, René Char, Denis Diderot, Alexandre Dumas, père, Julien Gracq, Victor Hugo, Franz Kafka, Gérard de Nerval, Jacques Prévert, Stendhal, and Jules Verne.
He resumed his literary career in 1968, in the wake of a relative cultural liberalization under Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime.
After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he traveled abroad and gave public readings in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. In 1995, the German Academic Exchange Service appointed him scholar at the University of Berlin. Naum spent much of his final years at his retreat in Comana.