George Vulturescu is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, among them The North and Beyond the North (2001),
Monograms on the Stones of the North (2005), Other Poems from the North (2007; The Blind Man from the North (2009); and Gold and Ivy (2011). Not surprisingly, he was born, and lives, in the north of Romania in the province of Satu Mare, where he works for the cultural administration. Among Vulturescu’s many prizes is the Romanian Cultural Order of Merit for Literature granting him the title of “Cavaler”—that is, “Knight.” In 2011, the dual-language Alte Poeme din Nord / Other Poems from the North, with English translations by Adam J. Sorkin with Olimpia Iacob, appeared in Iași, Romania, from Editura Fundației Culturale Poezia (The Poetry Cultural Foundation Publishing House).
Olimpia Iacob is an active translator of contemporary Romanian literature, with a dozen volumes of prose and poetry rendered into English, including works by Cassian Maria Spiridon, Gabriel Stănescu, Gheorghe Grigurcu, Petre Got, Mircea Petean, and Magdalena Dorina Suciu, as well as George Vulturescu’s Nord şi dincolo de Nord / North and Beyond the North. She is the author of more than twenty book-length guides and studies on learning and teaching the English language and writing and well more than a hundred articles on Romanian literature and on English-language learning. Iacob is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at “Vasile Goldiş” West University of Arad, Romania.
Adam J. Sorkin has translated more than forty-five books of contemporary Romanian literature, and his work has won the Poetry Society (U.K.) Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation for 2005, as well as the International Quarterly Crossing Boundaries Award, the Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize, and the Ioan Flora Prize for Poetry Translation, among others. His recent books include three collections from the University of Plymouth Press, all translated with Lidia Vianu: Ion Mureșan’s The Book of Winter and Other Poems (2011), Ioan Es. Pop’s No Way Out of Hadesburg (2010), and Mircea Ivănescu’s lines poems poetry (2009). The Ivănescu volume was shortlisted for the 2011 Poetry Society prize. He is the main translator of Carmen Firan’s Rock and Dew (Sheep Meadow Press, 2010), in collaboration with Firan. In 2011, he also published A Path to the Sea by Liliana Ursu, translated with Ursu and Tess Gallagher (Pleasure Boat Studios) and Medea and Her War Machines by Ioan Flora, translated with Alina Cârâc (University of New Orleans Press), as well as The Vanishing Point That Whistles: An Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (Talisman House). His translations of Carmen Firan, Emilian Galaicu-Păun, Mihail Gălățanu, and Liliana Ursu previously appeared in Connotation Press.---------
O pâine săracă pentru privirea de peste umăr a zeului
Nimeni nu vede mai bine decât vulturul de pe
Pietrele Nordului. Prezenţa noastră în peisaj nu
înseamnă nimic: mai important este iepurele şi
broasca şi şarpele asupra cărora se şi repede să le
înşface.
Smintit, urc iar, ca şi cel de ieri, smintitul,
primul om care a urcat pe Pietrele Nordului.
Aud vocea lui Moş Achim:
„Nu să vezi celălalt versant, ci să umpli golul dintre ei:
când ochii ţi se împotmolesc în zare ca nişte găleţi în
nămol, când privirea a devenit gheară şi
lunecă pe diamantul orizontului precum mâna
flămândului care rupe pâinea şi nu mai are
putere să ridice dumicatul spre gură…”
E în pericol
cel care stă şi aşteaptă fulgerele în locul nostru
pe Pietrele Nordului
unde Zeii ne aduceau tăbliţe cu litere
care se coceau imediat ce le priveam
ca nişte cireşe arse de brumă
Row, orbul de lângă mine îşi aminteşte:
— Când am văzut prima dată fulgerul am simţit
cum încep să-mi crească solzi de reptilă pe
ochi: bradul despicat se aprinse, se arcui cu
zvâcnet şi se prăbuşi în faţa mea…
Ştiu legătura, îi spun, orbul vindecat la
Bethsaida a strigat aceste cuvinte: „Văd oameni
umblând, îi văd ca pe nişte copaci…”
E în pericol cel care aşteaptă fulgerele
pe Pietrele Nordului
Cu picioarele în lutul literei
smintit şi poetul din camera unui bloc
sordid din Sătmar
care nu evită privirea zeului de peste umăr
şi lasă pentru ea spaţii goale ca în teatrul lui
Brook unde Horatio întreabă: „Cine-i acolo?”
e nevoie de un corp în teatru, Daniel,
de corpul actorului
smintit las în acest gol corpul literei
o pâine săracă pentru privirea de peste umăr a zeului
care muşcă şi tace
muşcă şi tace
lutul trebuie amestecat cu salivă
corpul literei nu se poate urca la cer
dacă e scris cu mână de lut
E în pericol
cel care stă şi aşteaptă fulgerele în locul nostru
pe Pietrele Nordului
— Privirea nu e o scară, ne spune în crâşma lui Humă
moşul Achim. Ea nu ne poate trece dintr-o parte în
alta a versanţilor… O dată pe an pietrele dislocate
de rădăcinile arborilor, sfărmate de geruri,
spulberate de vijelii urcă înapoi spre locul lor de
pe versanţi şi întreabă exarhii muntelui:
<<Animalul îl sfâşie pe animal, omul îl îngroapă
pe om. Nimeni nu îngroapă pietrele… Cât de smintit
trăieşte omul deasupra pietrelor ca să ne poată accepta
ca lespede de mormânt?> >
Smintit şi Row, orbul care-mi spune:
Fulgerul nu scrie nici o literă pentru tine.
Buclele lui îngheaţă litera, o umplu de solzi.
Duhoarea ei se retrage în hrube, în scorburi şi
cloceşte ouă viermănoase.
Puii bat deja cu ciocul în coajă.
Smintitule, vei zbura cu aripa lor…
Bread for the God’s Glance Over His Shoulder
No one can see better than the vulture
on the Stones of the North. Our presence in this landscape
means nothing: more important are the hare,
the frog and the snake which it is quick to dive down upon
and seize.
Crazed, I climb, just like the one yesterday, that madman,
the first who climbed the Stones of the North.
I can hear the voice of Moș Achim:
“Not to see the other side, but to fill the void between:
when your eyes get mired in the distance like buckets in
mud, when vision turns to claw and
glides over the diamond of the horizon like the hand
of a starving man who tears at the bread but hasn’t
the power to lift the piece to his mouth…”
He is in danger
the one who stands here and waits for the lightning
on the Stones of the North
where the Gods would bring us tablets with letters
that immediately baked when we glanced upon them
like cherries blighted by frost
Row, the blind man beside me, reminisces:
“When I saw lightning for the first time, I felt
beginning to grow over my eyes a reptile’s
scales: the fir tree split, burst into flame, bent low
with a jerk, came crashing down right before my eyes…”
“I know the connection,” I tell him. “The blind man cured
at Bethsaida cried out these words: ‘I see men
walking, I see them as trees…’”
He is in danger, the one who waits for the lightning
on the Stones of the North
With feet in the clay of the letter
crazed too the poet in the sordid apartment
in Sătmar
who does not avoid the god’s glance over his shoulder
but leaves for it empty spaces as in Brook’s staging
where Horatio asks: “Who’s there?”
In theater a body is needed, Daniel,
the actor’s body.
Crazed, I leave in this void the letter’s body
daily bread for the god’s glance over his shoulder
he who bites and keeps silent
bites and keeps silent
The clay must be mixed with saliva
the body of the letter cannot rise to the sky
if it is written with a hand of clay
He is in danger
the one who stands here and waits for the lightning
on the Stones of the North
“The gaze is not a ladder,” Moș Achim says to us
in Humă’s tavern. “It cannot take us from one side
to the other… Once a year the stones heaved up
by the tree roots, smashed by frost,
swept down by storms, climb back to their place
on both sides and ask the exarchs of the mountain:
Animal rips animal to pieces, man buries
man. No one buries the stones… How crazy is it for man
to live above the stones that they may accept us
as tombstones?
Crazed, too, is Row, the blind man who says to me:
“The lightning does not inscribe a letter for you.
Its locks of hair freeze the letter, fill it with scales.
Its stench hides in caves, hollows, where
it broods over wormy eggs.
The hatchlings already are tapping at the shell with their beaks.
You, a madman yourself, will fly with their wings…”
Gloria versurilor
Să citeşti lîngă o piatră,
sus pe Munte, un vers din Goethe:
„Dincolo de morminte, înainte!”
sau un vers de T.S. Eliot:
„Fii liniştit şi lasă bezna
să vină asupra ta!”
E un dans de funigei cuvîntul
deasupra pietrei
o conjuraţie a cometelor,
o noapte cu zurgălăi
Aceasta e gloria cea mare a
unui vers:
să-l citeşti pietrelor —
deasupra lor nu mai e decît
limbajul lui Dumnezeu
The Glory of the Lines
Reading beside a stone
high on the Mountain, a line from Goethe:
“Beyond the grave, onwards!”
or a line by T.S. Eliot:
“…be still, and let the dark
come upon you!”
The word is a dance of gossamer
above the stone
a conspiracy of comets,
a night with little bells
This is the great glory
of a line:
to read it to the stones –
above them stretches only
the language of God
Uniforma zeilor
Azi noapte un zeu mi-a pus mâna pe creier.
„Goleşte-l, mi-a zis. Curăţă-l ca pe–un horn:
tot ce e în el nu e nici al tău, nici al meu.”
E un impostor, gândii, pentru că nu-i vedeam
fulgerul.
El a ghicit şi chicoti: „Crezi că trebuie să am
mereu recuzită? Crezi că zeii ar trebui să poarte
uniformă?”
După o vreme îşi lăsă mâna pe umărul meu:
„Spală-l. Te-ai rezemat de umbre noroiase.”
Apoi mi-a atins braţul stâng: „Taie-l! Ai
mâzgălit cu el semne care n-au devenit literă…”
Îmi spălai umărul şi-mi tăiai braţul stâng.
Atunci el îmi atinse şi braţul drept:
„Scrie cu el numele meu”, îmi porunci.
Mă uram pentru că vedea cum tremur şi-mi era
milă de mine şi din milă am scris: „Eu…”
Nu-i vedeam faţa, dar după voce păru mulţumit:
„Acum eşti pregătit: ştii ce poţi deveni…”
The Gods’ Uniform
Last night a god placed his hand on my brain.
“Empty it,” he said to me. “Clean it as you sweep a chimney:
rid it of everything inside that is neither yours nor mine.”
He must be an impostor, I thought, for I could see
no thunderbolt.
He guessed and giggled: “Do you think I need
always to have props? Do you think gods should wear
a uniform?”
After a while he laid his hand on my shoulder:
“Wash it. You have leaned against muddy shadows.”
Then he touched my left arm: “Cut it off! With it, you
have scribbled signs that failed to become a letter…”
I washed my shoulder and cut off my left arm.
Then he touched my right arm, too:
“Write my name with it,” he ordered.
I hated that he could see me tremble, so I took pity
on myself and out of pity wrote: “I…”
I could not see his face, but from his voice he seemed pleased:
“Now you are ready: you know what you can become…”