I was moved by these two poems. But you never heard of him. He was silenced by the brutal Romanian communism. Yet he is resurfacing in Europe. His thoughts survive and hold sway. Looking at this little batch of poems I had in my many papers, I googled to see who wrote them. Ah, Lucian Blaga. No wonder the university where I was published 1993 – 2002 was named for him. No wonder they held him in such high esteem. The author is the Romanian poet, philosopher, playwright whom the Lucian Blaga University is named for. Now I see why. But I was drawn there, to that university, and had all of my early writings published by a professor in that school. Again, now I see why. Look at just a scraping of the barrel of what he wrote. Why don’t we know about him? And why did he write about his “stifled joy of life”? It was no symbol. He fell from grace in communism, which could not abide freethinkers like him. So he went from famous philosopher, poet, playwright to librarian. Imagine. He ended his days as a librarian. Look at what I found in cleaning up old papers:
In translation:
Quietness
All is so quiet around me that I think I hear
the moonbeams crash against the windowpanes.
Deep down in my heart
a stranger’s voice has waked
and a song sings of a craving, not mine.
They say that forefathers of untimely death,
with youthful blood in veins,
deep passions in their blood,
and the live sun in their passions,
come back,
come back to live on
in us
their unlived lives
All is so quiet around me that I think I hear
the moonbeams crash against the windowpanes.
Who knows, oh my soul, in what heart you too will sing
in ages to come
and play on sweet strings of quietness
and of my stifled joy of life? Who knows? Who knows?
OR THIS ONE:
From Your Hair
A wise man’s wisdom once told me
of a veil which no one could see through
it was a cobweb that kept all nature hidden
so no one could see anything really true
And now when you drown my cheeks and my eyes
in your hair
and I am made dizzy by its rich black waves
I dream
that the veil which turns the whole
wide world into a mystery
is woven
out of your hair—
and I shout,
and I shout
and for the first time feel
all the magic that the wise man put in his story
So now I know why I was published at Lucian Blaga University. I resonate. I too can imagine “playing on sweet strings of quietness of stifled joy of life” in another’s heart. Can’t we all? I am already intrigued to read more.
