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Censored Poems
"Marin Sorescu" (1936-1996) was so popular during the Ceausescu years that his readings had to be held in football stadiums and his books sold thousands of copies. While his witty, ironic parables were not directly critical of the regime, Romanians could read other meanings into them. All this time he was also writing "secret poems, " those he didn't dare publish. This volume is a selection from two books published after 1989, including borderline poems censored by the authorities as well as the riskier poems censored by the author. The book includes 10 line drawings by the author.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2002
About the author
Marin Sorescu
146 books169 followersIn 1964 the Romanian Communist government relaxed its censorship policies, signaling a new openness to free expression. The nation's poets heeded that signal, and Romanian poetry experienced a striking revival. Poet and playwright Marin Sorescu is perhaps one of the most popular figures to emerge from Romanian literary culture in the years since.
Sorescu writes in a plainspoken, down-to-earth style spiced with sly humor. He responds to the hardships of Romanian life not with grand rhetoric or fire-and-brimstone sermons, but with what translator Michael Hamburger describes as "ironic verse fables," as quoted by Dennis Deletant in the Times Literary Supplement. Virgil Nemoianu, also writing in the Times Literary Supplement, comments that "[Sorescu's] reactions to an increasingly absurd political regime were always cleverly balanced: he never engaged in the servile praise of leader and party usually required of Romanian poets, but nor did he venture into dissidence. He was content to let irony do its job."
His choice of irony over confrontation has made it possible for Sorescu to publish freely and frequently. The journal he edited for years, Revista Ramuri, managed like his poetry to stay within the bounds expected by the Romanian regime. Sorescu's plays, however, have not always fared as well. Both Iona and Exista nervi played to packed houses in Bucharest, the former in 1969 and the latter in 1982. But both plays were quickly withdrawn, their content deemed too controversial. Nonetheless, notes Deletant, the success of these pieces during their brief runs solidified "Sorescu's status as one of the leading writers of his generation."
Sorescu's plays and poetry have earned him, Deletant further states, "an unequaled audience" at home in Romania. And translations of his work into English have helped him build a secure international reputation. The qualities that have allowed his writings to flourish on Romania's state-controlled literary scene may contribute to his popularity abroad as well. There is a universality to Sorescu's conversational tone and ironic perspective, what Nemoianu calls "his rueful jocularity and the good-natured cynicism." George Szirtes, writing in Times Literary Supplement, finds in Sorescu's voice "the wry wisdom that sees through everything and yet continues to hope and despair."
source: Poetry Foundation
Sorescu writes in a plainspoken, down-to-earth style spiced with sly humor. He responds to the hardships of Romanian life not with grand rhetoric or fire-and-brimstone sermons, but with what translator Michael Hamburger describes as "ironic verse fables," as quoted by Dennis Deletant in the Times Literary Supplement. Virgil Nemoianu, also writing in the Times Literary Supplement, comments that "[Sorescu's] reactions to an increasingly absurd political regime were always cleverly balanced: he never engaged in the servile praise of leader and party usually required of Romanian poets, but nor did he venture into dissidence. He was content to let irony do its job."
His choice of irony over confrontation has made it possible for Sorescu to publish freely and frequently. The journal he edited for years, Revista Ramuri, managed like his poetry to stay within the bounds expected by the Romanian regime. Sorescu's plays, however, have not always fared as well. Both Iona and Exista nervi played to packed houses in Bucharest, the former in 1969 and the latter in 1982. But both plays were quickly withdrawn, their content deemed too controversial. Nonetheless, notes Deletant, the success of these pieces during their brief runs solidified "Sorescu's status as one of the leading writers of his generation."
Sorescu's plays and poetry have earned him, Deletant further states, "an unequaled audience" at home in Romania. And translations of his work into English have helped him build a secure international reputation. The qualities that have allowed his writings to flourish on Romania's state-controlled literary scene may contribute to his popularity abroad as well. There is a universality to Sorescu's conversational tone and ironic perspective, what Nemoianu calls "his rueful jocularity and the good-natured cynicism." George Szirtes, writing in Times Literary Supplement, finds in Sorescu's voice "the wry wisdom that sees through everything and yet continues to hope and despair."
source: Poetry Foundation
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 12, 2019
Whew. Where to start? In an academically coy afterword titled "Don't Burn the Translation -- Yet," John Hartley Williams expends a lot of words on the philosophical aim of translation as a process only to conclude that they, the translators, "have tried to assiduously domesticate the Romanian poems in English, without losing any of their original strangeness." Ironic that a collection called "Censored Poems" should have to go through a so-called domestication process, no?
Oh, how I wish this would have been a bilingual edition! Instead, this luxury is lavished upon exactly one poem. Beyond it, the only Romanian retained is in the original titles that appear underneath their docile English versions.
For instance, a title that could be rendered as "calamity" is perhaps too toothsome, thus it becomes a very defanged "ill-fated." "Executing the agreement" turns into "pleasant executions," without any care to the irony of having a poem about executions sport a title referencing humdrum legalities. "Alms" and "longing," scary words if ever there were any, are civilized into "festus interruptus" and "mal du pays" respectively. There is much hilarity in those last two choices; Sorescu eschewed inflated language, opting instead for the colloquial. To further tame whatever may have needed taming, gratuitous question marks are added at the end of English titles that, in Romanian, contain not a hint of questioning.
I find these changes baffling, especially when the content of Sorescu's poems is bold, cynical and shot through with copious gallows humor. The translation does manage to retain a sense of this, but without access to the originals, I can't say how much. The only bilingual poem is not very encouraging: "to taunt" becomes, somehow, "to trap," "ruckus" turns into "witches brew," and an entire stanza on the duplicity of informers is repurposed into a convoluted metaphor. It sort of works, sort of...
Again and again, as I read, I came upon word choices and whole phrases that left me wondering what the feral original was. As things stand, I'm dubious about the merits of language domestication. Good thing Marin Sorescu wrote sentences savage enough to resist the translator's attempts. Instead of being slobbered upon by a frizzy pack of yapping poodles, I was still, here and there, menaced by the howling of wolves.
Oh, how I wish this would have been a bilingual edition! Instead, this luxury is lavished upon exactly one poem. Beyond it, the only Romanian retained is in the original titles that appear underneath their docile English versions.
For instance, a title that could be rendered as "calamity" is perhaps too toothsome, thus it becomes a very defanged "ill-fated." "Executing the agreement" turns into "pleasant executions," without any care to the irony of having a poem about executions sport a title referencing humdrum legalities. "Alms" and "longing," scary words if ever there were any, are civilized into "festus interruptus" and "mal du pays" respectively. There is much hilarity in those last two choices; Sorescu eschewed inflated language, opting instead for the colloquial. To further tame whatever may have needed taming, gratuitous question marks are added at the end of English titles that, in Romanian, contain not a hint of questioning.
I find these changes baffling, especially when the content of Sorescu's poems is bold, cynical and shot through with copious gallows humor. The translation does manage to retain a sense of this, but without access to the originals, I can't say how much. The only bilingual poem is not very encouraging: "to taunt" becomes, somehow, "to trap," "ruckus" turns into "witches brew," and an entire stanza on the duplicity of informers is repurposed into a convoluted metaphor. It sort of works, sort of...
Again and again, as I read, I came upon word choices and whole phrases that left me wondering what the feral original was. As things stand, I'm dubious about the merits of language domestication. Good thing Marin Sorescu wrote sentences savage enough to resist the translator's attempts. Instead of being slobbered upon by a frizzy pack of yapping poodles, I was still, here and there, menaced by the howling of wolves.
December 31, 2023
The arrow (Săgeata [T])
Wounded, he'd have
been lost in the forest,
had he not followed the arrow.
More than half
of it
protruded from his chest
and showed him the way.
The arrow
had struck him in the back
and pierced his body.
Its bloodied tip
was a signpost.
What a blessing
to have it point
a path
between the trees!
Now he knew
he'd never again
go wrong
and he
wasn't far
from the mark.
Wounded, he'd have
been lost in the forest,
had he not followed the arrow.
More than half
of it
protruded from his chest
and showed him the way.
The arrow
had struck him in the back
and pierced his body.
Its bloodied tip
was a signpost.
What a blessing
to have it point
a path
between the trees!
Now he knew
he'd never again
go wrong
and he
wasn't far
from the mark.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews