The Shadow of Words by Ana Blandiana, translated by Paul Scott Derrick & Victoria Patea PRE-ORDER
Published 20th February 2025. Available for pre-order.
Ana Blandiana is one of Romania's foremost poets, a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, and now one of her country's strongest candidates for the Nobel Prize. A prominent opponent of the Ceaușescu regime, Blandiana became known for her daring, outspoken poems as well as for her courageous defence of ethical values. Over the years, her works have become the symbol of a moral consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian government. The Shadow of Words covers Blandiana's early collections published from 1964 to 1981, as well as including uncollected poems from that period which only appeared in anthologies. It follows My Native Land A4 (2014), The Sun of Hereafter • Ebb of the Senses (2017) and Five Books (2021) in completing Bloodaxe's presentation of Blandiana's collected poems to date in English translation. She published these poems during the brief period of political thaw of Romania's communist regime, when aestheticism took on a more subversive role, reaffirming the autonomy of the poetic word and freeing it from the stultifying demands of propagandist proletarian art. The title of First Person Plural (1964) expresses the desire of the self to define its personality in relation to the world. Blandiana celebrates the cheerfulness of youth, the joy of nature and the discovery of sensuality and eros. Exalting the sense and the intimacy of matter in a sleepy universe, these lyrics lead on to ascetic pronouncements and the puritanical rigour of the ethics of Achilles' Heel (1966). With The Third Sacrament (1969), Blandiana moves towards a new stage in which poetry approaches mysticism and takes a path that will lead it to the depths of being, on the border between dream and reality, life and death. She returns obsessively to the motif of sleep in Sleep within Sleep (1977), a true treatise on the multiple meanings of sleep. Blandiana's imaginary is pastoral and bucolic. The defining note of The Cricket's Eye (1981) is the search for candour and communion with nature. These visionary and romantic poems attempt to decipher the impalpable essences of the universe. In her early poems, Blandiana's voice articulates a pure and vibrant spiritual language of unmistakable ethical clarity, calling for for moral regeneration in the face of indifference. Their ethical idealism and steadfastness override the many masks of degradation. These youthful books announce from the outset the sense of responsibility and faith in the survival of the collective soul that has always characterised Blandiana's poetry.
Ana Blandiana is one of Romania's foremost poets, a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, and now one of her country's strongest candidates for the Nobel Prize. A prominent opponent of the Ceaușescu regime, Blandiana became known for her daring, outspoken poems as well as for her courageous defence of ethical values. Over the years, her works have become the symbol of a moral consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian government. The Shadow of Words covers Blandiana's early collections published from 1964 to 1981, as well as including uncollected poems from that period which only appeared in anthologies. It follows My Native Land A4 (2014), The Sun of Hereafter • Ebb of the Senses (2017) and Five Books (2021) in completing Bloodaxe's presentation of Blandiana's collected poems to date in English translation. She published these poems during the brief period of political thaw of Romania's communist regime, when aestheticism took on a more subversive role, reaffirming the autonomy of the poetic word and freeing it from the stultifying demands of propagandist proletarian art. The title of First Person Plural (1964) expresses the desire of the self to define its personality in relation to the world. Blandiana celebrates the cheerfulness of youth, the joy of nature and the discovery of sensuality and eros. Exalting the sense and the intimacy of matter in a sleepy universe, these lyrics lead on to ascetic pronouncements and the puritanical rigour of the ethics of Achilles' Heel (1966). With The Third Sacrament (1969), Blandiana moves towards a new stage in which poetry approaches mysticism and takes a path that will lead it to the depths of being, on the border between dream and reality, life and death. She returns obsessively to the motif of sleep in Sleep within Sleep (1977), a true treatise on the multiple meanings of sleep. Blandiana's imaginary is pastoral and bucolic. The defining note of The Cricket's Eye (1981) is the search for candour and communion with nature. These visionary and romantic poems attempt to decipher the impalpable essences of the universe. In her early poems, Blandiana's voice articulates a pure and vibrant spiritual language of unmistakable ethical clarity, calling for for moral regeneration in the face of indifference. Their ethical idealism and steadfastness override the many masks of degradation. These youthful books announce from the outset the sense of responsibility and faith in the survival of the collective soul that has always characterised Blandiana's poetry.
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