Transcript Mihai Eminescu - Folkart Comenius

Romanian Poets
“Mihai Eminescu National Highschool”, Buzau, Romania
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu (born on 15th January
1850, died on 15th june 1889) was a poet,
prose writer, culture critic, critical
journalist, literal and dramatic critic, folk
reaper, mindful of philology, pedagogy,
metaphysics, politics and he was considered
a complete and manysided genius, because
his creation is about so many domains of the
spirit. He is not a myth anymore, he is a
spiritual reality, a permanent value of the
national culture.
Eminescu's interest for the folk creation has
been manifested by the reaping of folk texts,
by the folk inspiration, which came from the
original texts and folk problems, as they
were written by the poet.
The biggest themes and reasons of Eminescu's creation are:
1) The theme of the TIME, which has been seen as a super theme of the creation and the
poet's favourite and is found in almost every poem. It is correlated with the theme of the
cosmic.
2) The COSMIC is represented by its elements, the infinite, the sky, the Sun, the Moon,
the stars, the lucifers, the music of the spheres, the chaos.
3) The HISTORY, which can also triger other themes of Eminescu's creation:
a) the idea of mother country, the feeling of patriotism ;“What I wish you, sweet
Romania”:
What I wish you, sweet Romania
My country of glory, my country of longing?
Nervous arms, the weapon of strength,
To your great past, a great future!
b) a panorama of the deserts (“Memento mori”);
c) genius and art condition (The Satires,” Lucifer”);
d) the patriotic meditation ;“The Third Satire”:
While at the earth's four corners rose up against the sky
Atlas, Caucasus, Taurus and the Balkan mountains high,
The wide Euphrates, Tigris, the Nile, the Danube old,
All 'neath its boughs protecting their mighty waters rolled.
4) The NATURE: “The First Satire”, “Desire”, “One Wish Alone Have I”, “Eve on the
Hill”.
One Wish Alone Have I :
One wish alone have I:
In some calm land
Beside the sea to die.
5) The LOVE: “The Lake”, “Desire”, “How many times, my love”, “Angel and Demon”,
“Down Where the Lonely Poplars Grow”.
The Lake:
Water lilies load all over
The blue lake amid the woods,
That imparts, while in white circles
Startling, to a boat its moods.
Desire:
Come now to the forest's spring
Running wrinkling over the stones,
To where lush and grassy furrows
Hide away in curving boughs.
The "Lucifer" is one of the
cornerstones of European romanticism.
It seems to us to be the sublime
swansong of European Romanticism, a
song expressing the regret for the
breach between the man of the
positivistic century, the man inclined
towards realism and naturalism, and
the mythic and poetic cradle of the man
soul.
The "Lucifer" remains the sad story of
the inner splitting of modern man, cast
in a misleading form owing to the
apparent simplicity of the folk-like
verse
and
to
the
deceiving
traditionalism of its imagery.
LUCIFER
Once on a time, as poets sing
High tales with fancy laden,
Born of a very noble king
There lived a wondrous maiden.
An only child, her kinsfolk boon,
So fair, imagination faints;
As though amidst the stars the moon,
Or Mary amidst the saints.
From `neath the castle’s dark retreat,
Her silent way she wended
Each evening to the window-seat
Where Lucifer attended.
And secretly, with ne’er a fail,
She watched his double race,
Where vessels drew their pathless trail
Across the ocean’s face.
And as intent she drank his light,
Desire was quickly there;
While he who saw her every night
Soon fell in love with her.
As much as we can humanity predict, the Romanian poetic literature will continue, in
the 21st century, under the influence of his genius, and the shape of the national
language, which has been found through Eminescu the most beautiful achievement of
the future Romanian reflection.
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi (1880- 1967)
1927 He publishes his first poetry volume Suitable
Words (Cuvinte potrivite)
1931 He publishes Mildew Flowers (Flori de
mucigai)
1934 He gets the National Prize for Poetry.
Literary criticism has started to distinguish in Tudor Arghezi's poetry fundamental
themes. His wide literary production contains all the big themes of poetry.
I Philosophical poems:
a) Poetic arts- poem about poetry
b) Poem of knowledge- The Psalms- Arghezi's oscillation between yes and no,
between faith and not.
II Social poems
Aesthetics of ugly- The volume Mildew Flowers (Flori de mucigai) has provoked
great controversy. The poems express the experience from prison.
III Poems of joy
The poems for his children. Poems full of fragility.
As Baudelaire, Tudor Arghezi wishes to introduce a poem of literary plastic
simultaneity, superior musicality. In Arghezi's vision, the universe is a sacred space
full of signs by which the Divinity registers its messages: it is the responsibility of
the poet to decode these messages, making them into his personal language form.
Arghezi's poetry is a continuous hymn about the generosity of all the aspects of
creation, a meditation on its deep meanings, an interrupted interrogation: the
objective is the extraction of the sublime from the most simple fact of vulgarity.
Mildew Flowers
I wrote them with my nail on walls
In the empty alcoves,
In the dark and in solitude,
without the solicitude
of the bull, the lion or the eagle
that worked so eager
for Luke, Mark and John.
These are verses without time,
Verses of the dust,
Of terrible thirst
And hunger for the ashes that burnt,
Verses of this very moment.
When my celestial nail was worn blunt and low
I wanted to let it grow
And it never grew back in place Or maybe I couldn’t recognize its face.
It was dark. In the distance, outside, I could hear the rain.
And my hand felt like a claw through the pain,
Incapable to extend,
So I forced myself to write with the nails of my left hand.
(Translation by Loredana Tiron-Pandit)
Psalm
I could the eternity with comrade's
I could the eternity with comrade's
To get accomplice to my thoughts;
New violins to charm, new melody
To find- and hard and rangy lines.
[...]
A Woman's body to embrace
I will not bring to you, one soft and young;
Only the suffer of the sky, a shame
It's not with her to upset the waters of Jordan.
I want to die in dark and rottenness,
Not touched of saints, dreadful and disgusted.
And not known that you were loving me
And not know that you are living just for me.
(Personal adaptation)
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu ( 18 March 1895 – 11 August 1961)
was a Romanian mathematician and poet. As
mathematician, he was known as Dan Barbilian.
1929 - takes his doctorate in mathematics and in
1930 he publishes his first volume of poetry
called Joc secund (Mirrored Play).
King-fungus Crypto and Sami Enigel
(Riga Crypto și Lapona Enigel)
King-fungus Crypto and Sami Enigel
(Riga Crypto si Lapona Enigel) is a ballad
written by Ion Barbu in which can be found
figurative elements from nature.
The unfortunate story of Crypto, Kingfungus, is told with a tenderness full of
gravity. Crypto falls in love with little Sami
Enigel, stopped at night in his glade and he
tries to convince her to remain there, but
Enigel rejects his request because she
aspires with her entire nature to solarity.
The title of this ballad suggests the great
love stories in literature: Romeo and Juliet,
Tristan and Isolde.
The first phase of the activity of this poet is represented by a tough vocabulary,
but new, with a serious tone. The material used was more cosmic : lava,
mountains, basalt, granite.
The second phase of activity of Ion Barbu is called SCENICAL AND
ORIENTAL. The lyricism of the poet is enriched by color. “His new inspirations
have not come again from rock or classical mythology or Heredia, or Nietzsche,
but from the native layer of a certain folklore.” The poet does not return to the
folk poetry; he returns to the native layer of Danubian Plain, to the Bucharest
slum muse and folklore. The cosmic verbal material is replaced by the scenical
material.
The Dogmatic Egg
- Ion Barbu
It's given to these gloomy folks
The sterile egg for daily meal,
But lively egg with seed on top
It's born in our sight as sunny seal!
As ancient world, in crystal time,
Is swimming in a thinly lime,
The new and pure egg – a gift
For wedding, a palace or a crypt.
Three sheets of silk coiled in a row,
The white sleeps in such bed of snow
So languid, and enclosed, serene,
Like loved-one tumbled in a dream.
The human seed?
From very high
From the plus pole of his own sky
Where lump of earth
Has never touched a bit.
He offers smoothly
His bursting kiss
So masculine
To the white
With its cold lips of hyaline. […]
(Translated by Liviu Georgescu)
Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga ( 9 May 1895 – 6 May 1961) was a
Romanian poet, philosopher, playwright. He was
a commanding personality of the Romanian
culture of the inter-war period. In 1956, he was
nominated to the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Poetry : 1919 - Poems of Light ( Poemele
Luminii ); 1921 - The Prophet's Footsteps ( Pașii
Profetului ); 1924 - In the Great Passage ( În
marea trecere ).
Drama : 1927 - Manole the Craftsman
( Meșterul Manole ); 1930 - The Children's
Crusade.
Philosophical works : 1924 - "The Philosophy
of Style“; 1925 - "The Original Phenomenon"
and "The Facets of a Century“; 1937 - "The
Genesis of Metaphor and the Meaning of
Culture“.
Lucian Blaga’s poetry represents a moment of Romanian lyricism elevation.
In Blaga’s spiritual formation played an important role the following factors :
 Early contact with the rural world and folk spirituality : “I think the eternity was
born in the village”
 Contact with Indian philosophy. From here he remembered themes, motifs, ideas:
theme of infinite time, the theme of the body as a prison of the soul, sleep and
silence as ways of achieving absolute.
The light (Lumina)-Lucian Blaga
The light that I feel
flooding my chest when I see you,
isn’t it, I wonder, a drop from the light
created on the first day,
from that light so thirsty of life?
I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders
(Eu nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii )
I will not crush the world’s corolla of
wonders
and I will not kill
with reason
the mysteries I meet along my way
in flowers, eyes, lips, and graves.
The light of others
drowns the deep magic hidden
in the profound darkness.
I increase the world’s enigma
with my light
much as the moon with its white
beams
does not diminish but increases
the shimmering mysteries of night –
I enrich the darkening horizon
with chills of the great secret.
All that is hard to know
becomes a greater riddle
under my very eyes
because I love alike
flowers, lips, eyes, and graves.
Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stănescu (1933-1983)
1957 He appears for the first time in Tribune
(Tribuna) and in Literary Newspaper (Gazeta
Literara) with the poems: There Were Many
People(Au fost mulți oameni), Land (Pământ),
The Hospital was Burning with the Patients
(Ardea spitalul cu tot cu pacienți).
1960 he appears with the first volume of poems
The Meaning of Love (Sensul iubirii)
1966 He publishes 11 Elegies (11 Elegii)
1971 In Yugoslavia appear the volumes: Belgrad
in Five Friends (Belgradul în cinci prieteni) and
Unwords (Necuvintele)
1980 Candidate at the Nobel prize for Literature.
1983 Appears Ask the circle to forgive you (Cereți cercului iertare)- New York-Cleveland-London
Literary production
After Mihai Eminescu and Tudor Arghezi, Nichita Stănescu is the third innovator of
poetic language in Romanian literature.
Particularities of neo-modernism poetry found in Nichita Stănescu's poems:
- the poems is permanently vexing the readers expectations
- the fight of self to self, the collation between creator and thinker
- the reinterpretation of the myths
- the subtlety of metaphors
- the irony, the playful spirit
- The philosophic reflection, the approaching big themes of literature: love, death,
nature, time.
Stages of creation:
The fist stage- the exuberance, the first volumes. Themes like love, enthusiasm
The second stage- internalized lyricism. The ideas are more and more abstract. In this
stage, the author starts the reinterpretation of the myths.
The third stage- cold lyrical poetry, the stage of maturity. The meditation of death and
time.
I am
Here I am, stretched out over the stones, I moan,
the organs are broken, the maestro,
oh, he is mad because he suffers
from the entire universe.
I cannot bear what is not seen,
what is not heard, not tasted.
I am not sick with songs,
but with broken windows.
(Translated by Paul Doru Mugur)
The tenth elegy is similar to The Little Ewe because of this crying , similar to the
melancholy Romanian folk songs, then the famous Crying of the Unicorn by Dimitrie
Cantemir.
The Land
Oh, what I have more precious on this world,
your sweet, tremendous land
and all your names you have
to apricot from apricotBranch with apple flower
and a majestic bird.
(personal adaptation)
This is a poem from the volume A Land called Romania. Nichita Stănescu has several
poems supporting the Romanian spirit through literature.
Mircea Cărtărescu
Mircea Cărtărescu (1956- still alive)
1981 He appears with the volume Beacons,
cabinets, photographs...
1990 The Prize of Writer's Unions for The
Levant.
2003 He publishes 50 Sonnets by Mircea
Cărtărescu With Fifty Drawings by Tudor
Jebeleanu.
Since 2005, Mircea Cărtărescu received
numerous international prizes.
Mircea Cărtărescu wrote numerous books: Beautiful Strangers (Frumoasele străine2010), The Dream (Visul- 1989), Why We Love Women (De ce iubim femeile- 2004).
Mircea Cărtărescu has changed radically Romanian literature, both prose and poetry,
through the new themes which are representative for the literary flow called postmodernism. It is also considered that his literary flow is called neovanguardism.
The most beautiful poems written by Mircea Cărtărescu can be found in volumes
Poems of love, 1983 and Everything, 1985. They express the mood of a lover, even
when they not refer explicitly to love.
Most of his poems are statements of love and, at the same time, a comedy of the
declaration of love. To stun his girlfriend, the poet stood up in front of her temples of
words, which also him tears them apart, knowing that he might be able at any time of
much more.
WHEN YOU NEED LOVE
when you want to hold someone, there’s no one to hold.
when you want to make a phone call, everybody’s out.
when you are down on your knees, who asks about you?
who cares? who will ever care?
please stand by me, think of me
treat me gently, don’t torture me, don’t make me jealous,
don’t leave me, for I wouldn’t stand another break-up
stand by my side, root for me.
(Translation from fantasticpieces.wordpress.com)
Folk Art and its influence on European Culture
Students:
 Berindei Andreea
 Doni Alina
 Manolache Adina
Coordinating teachers:
 Vlad Mihaela (English)
 Dobre Florentina (French)