Excerpts :
Princess Marthe Bibesco
Ana Blandiana
Smaranda Braescu
Madelene “Madi” Cancicov
Nina Cassian
Elena Ceausescu
Ioana Celibidache
Queen Elisabeth of Romania
Princess Gregoire Ghica
Princess Ileana of Romania
Dora D’Istria
Monica Lovinescu
Ileana Malancioiu
Queen Marie of Romania
Dr. Agnes Kelly Murgoci
Mabel Nandris
Countess Anna de Noailles
Ana Novac
Oana Orlea
Ana Pauker
Marta Petreu
Elisabeta Rizea of Nucsoara
Sanda Stolojan
Leontina Vaduva
Anca Visdei
Sabina Wurmbrand
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Nina Cassian
Poet, Novelist, Translator, Composer, Exile living in New York
since 1985
(b.1924 Galati)
Biography:
“I left those walls
smeared with my blood?
it was an atrocious massacre.
Now I’m flying over the city
not like a Chagall bride
beside her bridegroom, the violinist,
but like a winged nightmare
with an entire biography of dirty feathers.?”
Conviction:
"I worked to be understood by the farmers and workers,
I was torturing myself and distorting my artistry. Some of us
Romanian writers did it with conviction. That was the worst."
Excluded:
"They don't want me there, I'm not sure why. They used
to consider me eccentric and rebellious...But now maybe it's
because they resent that I'm living a better life in America."
Uprooting:
"It is a terrible tragedy to, at age 60, leave your country
and live in a place where you are surrounded by a foreign language
and with two impossible professions -- poetry and classical
music, I had had my share of fame and glory, and didn't expect
more."
Biography:
Nina Cassian is a personality of many
facets and the contradictions of her life reflect in a way the
tragedy of many Romanian intellectuals, whose career started
before the war and subsequently had to adapt in order to survive,
some of them more zealosly than others. Nina Cassian falls into
the latter category. For the generation that grew immediately
after the war in Communist Romania, Cassian’s poems were
the staple diet of the Marxist text books – of ‘approved’
literature. After the fall of Ceausescu she said (see quote)
that she compromised “without conviction” whilst she
“tortured her artistry” – well, other people
who did not compromise at all were instead marginalized, starved,
or worse, were thrown into prisons where they died or came out
only a ghost of their former selves. By contrast, Nina Cassian
composed with those in power whilst the going was good. Her
poems were turned into cantatas by Anatol Vieru , another creature
of sorry memory – a Cantata was the kind of epic intended
to the glory of the Communist Party. Cassian is not repentend
for her past “Communist sympathies”, but then she
goes on saying, in the same breath that after 1989 she was no
longer wanted in Romania… where she wished to return only
after five years of American exile (see quote). She assigns
this rejection by her fellow Romanians to the inherent envy
of human nature – but this is not enough to explain the
nausea expressed by those who stayed behind, put up and shut
up, without compromising and remaining true to themselves.
Nina Cassian left Ceausescu’s Romania in 1985, at the age
of 61 and after 40 years of Communism, during which time, as
a poet of the day she published 50 volumes of verse (and some
fiction) vetted by the censorship of a Gheorghiu Dej, Ana Pauker
and Ceausescu. In defence of the poet it must be said that apparently
she wrote also some scathing verse about Ceausescu. These were
found out when a close friend was arrested and tortured. At
the time Cassian was already ensconced in New York on a Fulbright
Scholarship, so she applied for and was granted political asylum
in America.
Perhaps Cassian’s poem, quoted above sums up best the poet’s
own view of herself, describing herself hovering over the city
she had left behind (Bucharest), after a murderous massacre
(Communist oppression), flying over it with “an entire
biography of dirty feathers” (mixing with the unholy).
Cassian translated the “Twelfth Night” into Romanian
although surprisingly she admits that her English was “sketchy”
when she arrived in the United States. She appears to be best
known by her fellow American poets rather than by the general
public in America. Not so in Romania, but for different reasons.
Bibliography:
- Life Sentence (1990)
- Blue Apple
- Lady of Miracles
- Call Yourself Alive
- “Take My Word for It," 1998
Poetry in Romanian
- On the Scale of One to One (La scala 1/1)
- Our Soul (Sufletul Nostru)
- Vital Year, 1917 (An viu, noua sute si saptesprezece)
- Horea not alone anymore (Horea nu mai esta singur)
- Youth (Tinerete)
- Selected poems (Versuri alese)
- The Measures of the Year (Verstele anulai)
- Dialogue of the Wind and Sea (Dialogul vintuli cu marea)
- Open-air performance—A Monograph of Love (Spectacol in
aer liber—o monografie a dragostei)
- Gift Giving (Sa ne facum daruri)
- The Discipline of the Harp (Disciplina harfei)
- The Blood (Singele)
- Parallel Destinies (Destinele Paralele)
- Ambit (Ambitus)
- Time Devouring: Selected Poems (Cronofagie)
- Requiem (Recviem)
- The Big Conjugation (Marea conjugare)
- Lotto Poems (Loto poeme)
- Suave (Suave)
- Spectacle in the Open-air: Selected Love Poems (Spectacol
in aer liber)
- One Hundred Poems (O suta de poeme)
- Orbits (Viraje)
- For Mercy (Indurare)
- Count Down (Numaratoarea inversa)
Fiction in Romanian
- You're Terrific—I'm Leaving You: (Atit de grozava
si adio)
- Fictitious Confessions (Confidente fictive)
- Parlor Games (Jocuri de vacanta)
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