#romanian lit

[soracities]

Marin Sorescu, "Getting Used to Your Name" (trans. Gabriela Dragnea) [ID'd]

[zarzava]

three romanian authors to read with ur dracula daily

dracula is an orientalist text conceived at the height of british empire, grounded in distortions of a region that stoker never visited. sadly (and unsurprisingly) i found very few romanian authors who have been translated into english online, so here’s a meagre list of recs:

1. luminița cioabă

romanian roma author, famous in romania as the daughter of bulibasha (the king of the roma nation), she forged her own path as a writer of short stories in the oral roma tradition which portray in vivid detail the history of the roma people of romania 

the birch grove

queen of the night and stone flower 

meralda

from her book, the lost country 

2. marin sorescu

from humble rural romanian roots, he wrote under the oppressive ceausescu government. in a national ironic tradition he very famously said: "Just as I can't give up smoking because I don't smoke, I can't give up writing because I have no talent." some of my favorite poems:

the sea shell (1983)

carbon paper (1980)

creation (1992)

3. paul celan

jewish poet from bucovina. i recommend this beautiful essay by ilya kaminsky, who like celan was forced to flee eastern europe due to antisemitism, deconstructing various translators’ attempts to adapt celan’s texts and experience of the holocaust. these are all poems from a 1971 poetry collection

all souls

leap-centuries 

language mesh and night

homecoming

[almathoraleydis]

Ciresarii

The main characters of the five books, in an unfinished group photo.

[davidlavieri]

Space is Paradise and time is Inferno. How strange it is that, like the emblem of bipolarity, in the center of a shadow is light, and that light creates shadows. After all, what else is memory, this poisoned fountain at the center of the mind, this center of paradise? Well-shaft walls of tooled marble shaking water green as bile, and its bat-winged dragon standing guard? And what is love? A limpid, cool water from the depths of sexual hell, an ashen pearl in an oyster of fire and rending screams? Memory, the time of the timeless kingdom. Love, the space of the spaceless domain. The seeds of our existence, opposed yet so alike, unite across the great symmetry, and annul it through a single great feeling: nostalgia.

Mircea Cărtărescu, Blinding

[eliutza23]

Mihail Sadoveanu: I like writing stories set in nature, nature is beautiful, it is the ideal, the city is bad.

Also Mihail Sadoveanu: *probably lived in the city*

Mihail Sadoveanu: Modernisation is bad, it must be avoided, things such as trains and clocks and all that new stuff suck. They corrupt the human, human should be with nature.

Mihail Sadoveanu: *gets killed in a train*

Mihail Sadoveanu: Many of my stories are set in nature, actually, Baltagul happens in the mountain side where a peasant (I love peasants, they’re amazing) tries to get justice.

Also Mihail Sadoveanu: *signs a paper for the execution of some peasants in the mountain side who are trying to fight communism and get justice*

[enlilwind]

Scrisă într-un stil epistolar, Această dulce povară, tinerețea de Cella Serghi este o poveste de dragoste inspirată din realitate, autoarea introducând multe evenimente din propria biografie. Cita este o copilă din flori, nedorită de nimeni, căsătorită mai mult din datorie decât din alte considerente, cu un bărbat care nu o iubește. Ion Berezeni este un doctor renumit, publicist și persoană publică, cunoscând-o pe Cita din întâmplare. Deși ambii sunt căsătoriți, între cei doi se înfiripă imediat un sentiment mai puternic decât orice, dar universul este împotriva lor, lăsându-i să se întâlnească doar prin intermediul scrisorilor.

[icecreamwithjackdaniels]

"[...] my soul was always snared by that gentle melancholy felt by too–sensitive beings, so sensitive that even caresses make them suffer, for whom even pleasure is a wound."

— Mateiu Caragiale, Rakes of the Old Court, 1929

[thebluesthour]

Below, on the guesthouse terrace, chairs and shawls and white dresses can be seen. And beyond, the idyllic, clear, blue lake. A postcard.

Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh)

[houseofchains]

From “Luceafărul” (tr: “The Evening Star”) by Mihai Eminescu, the greatest Romanian romantic poem of all time.

Translated by Corneliu M. Popescu

[carnageandculture]

Jonah by Marin Sorescu

[beljar]

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

Emil Cioran, The New Gods, 1969

[soracities]

Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh)

[Text ID: "September has arrived, lovely in its weakening light."]

[barnbridges]

almost done with sound and fury because mentally ill, now the urge is to FARTHER avoid tsh and. reread trashy romanian folktakes. im such a loser.

[jamel-omar]

Allways keep your #skills in shape and good... have a nice day 👌✨💫 #bestoftheday #hiphop #breaking #breakdance #bboy #trickshot #fit #lit #style #dance #danceclass #jamelomar #beautiful #like #follow #instalikes #instadaily #lebanese #romanian #hamburg #photooftheday #pictureoftheday ⚡️ (hier: KAIFU LODGE) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn4fZg1MM04/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[davidlavieri]

My triangular head, like a snake's, was transformed now by the terror of statues and cupolas that still reflected in my eyes. My heart was almost visible in the network of blue veins in the skin of my narrow torso. Between my thighs, my sex, already thick from the erections of so many painful nights, veered from childish pink toward dark brown. The hair on my thighs was growing thicker. I turned my back to the mirror and looked over my shoulder. My vertebrae rose like little white hills beneath my skin. On my back, as far as I could see, the triangles of my shoulder blades were so apparent that they looked like two thin discs, one on top of the other. My buttocks were and heavy, like a girl's, and the space between them was dark with hair, like a thick line of ink. I was obviously an animal, a fragile mechanism of organic material. I could not understand how I was able to make my skin and muscles move.

Mircea Cărtărescu, Blinding

[shrews-things]

Trying to find courses to take for extra credit might actually be The most fucked up thing why are they making me do this