The Romanian Poet who wrote in French.
David Johnson May 19, 2024
After the long battle, rest in peace, my heart, Sleep in the midst of carnage as would a proud conqueror,
“The flower will wilt- fleeting life fades tomorrow
Come, dearest of wives, hug my shoulder a while
You cling to me now: will you not in deep sorrow
Be seeking my grave over many a mile?“
Where are the lands of poetry? In the mind’s eye and in the pen, lungs, heart and very breath of those poets of those countries which this work is utterly devoted. I choose Hungary, Armenia, Russia, Poland, Serbia and Georgia as nations of verse- and I feel at liberty to add other nations to this list as they become visible and loved. All have a deep and abiding Christian heritage. All have suffered greatly.
These are countries in which words are the words of the wounded. Passed to a living, appreciative posterity and gifted to the world. I proclaim no linguistic specialisation nor exhaustive knowledge of these nations. I am an amateur in the profoundest sense not a specialist.
Armenia sends haunting missals from blood soaked Asia to an indifferent Europe which has moved away from such concerns. Hungary’s isolated language and isolated revolution provided the world with a vision of verse that moved people to sacrifice their lives. The Serbs nursed their yearning for freedom with poems of the soil and the blood. In Russia they killed and muzzled their poets, but the people still stood shivering in fear to listen to it and memorise it. And Poland, ever sacrificed, ever poetic, offers us her exquisite soul and her anguish. Poland betrayed so frequently, responded with brilliance and beauty. Their vision, tears, imagination, defiance and sorrow have illuminated and caressed my mind for many years now.
In the lands of poetry there is love and despair, existence and survival, revolt and reflection- and for the desiccated West, there is some inspiration from those lands of poetry which have created in tandem with tragedy and loved amidst their cataclysmic repression.
