In Praise of Sleep

The present volume includes the majority of Lucian Blaga's poetry written before the Communist era. Missing are only the posthumous poems. The genius of any poetry is fragile because it does not reside in any of its analytically identifiable components. Blaga's postwar poetry appears to have all the "Blagian" elements, but the animating breath is largely missing. The great silence took it back. In leaving out a large body of work by so neatly severing the earlier poet from his later self, I may be committing a sin Blaga did not. But I could not translate what failed to inspire passion in me, after living so intimately and for so long with what I love. For that, I beg to be forgiven. "An original edition of these translations was published by Ohio University Press in 1989. A few months before the momentous end of the year that saw the collapse of the Soviet empire and the end of the dictatorship in Romania. I returned to my native country to report for NPR and ABC news on the bloody finale. Following the return of "normalcy," Blaga's poetry was openly read and received new attention. This book, long out of print, received a new reading by me, as well. I made changes to the translation, having to do mainly with my better knowledge of English. Blaga's poetry has grown more urgent and more profound in the decades following its first appearance. This phenomenon is the result of increasing attention to the art itself, but also to Blaga's pioneering engagement with the nonhuman. Romanian poetry, once a terra incognita, has become better known in the major languages of the world thanks to the explosion of translation's and fascination with the last century's roots of the avant garde." -- Andrei Codrescu from his introduction
About the Author: Lucian Blaga (1895-1961) was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer highly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. In 1939, he became professor of cultural philosophy at the University of Cluj, temporarily located in Sibiu in the years following the Second Vienna Award. During his stay in Sibiu, he edited, beginning in 1943, the annual magazine Saeculum. He was dismissed from his university professor chair in 1948 because he refused to express his support to the new Communist regime and he worked as librarian for the Cluj branch of the History Institute of the Romanian Academy. He was forbidden to publish new books, and until 1960 he was allowed to publish only translations.In 1956, he was nominated to the Nobel Prize for Literature on the proposal of Bazil Munteanu of France and Rosa del Conte of Italy, but it seems the idea was Mircea Eliade's. Still, the Romanian Communist government sent two emissaries to Sweden to protest against the nomination, because Blaga was considered an idealist philosopher, and his poems were forbidden until 1962.