Introduction

In 1967, the year which saw the publication of Ivănceanu’s first poetry book, Cinste specială (Special Honor), from where all the translations presented here were selected, the Romanian poetry reader with a somewhat longer memory had already encountered two waves of the avant-garde. To the first wave, roughly corresponding to the Dada moment of the avant-garde, belonged Tristan Tzara, B. Fundoianu, Ion Vinea, Ilarie Voronca, and Stephan Roll; to the second, in part of a surrealist inspiration, Gellu Naum, Eugen Ionescu, Dolfi Trost, Gherasim Luca, Virgil Teodorescu, and Miron Radu Paraschivescu. Both of these waves were cut short long before they reached the shore. Tzara, Fundoianu, and Voronca left Romania very early in their literary careers and switched to writing in French, whereas Vinea, as well as all the members of the second wave, with the exception of Paraschivescu, either managed to emigrate (Ionescu, Trost, Luca) or were sentenced to almost twenty years of silence in 1947. The theme of the absurd had been present in Romanian letters even before the birth of Dada, in the work of Urmuz and was further developed by Eugen Ionescu in his theater, after his move to Paris.

Against this background, it is surprising that Ivănceanu’s poetry, while decidedly avant-garde, is in no way derivative, but rather highly original in its phrasing, its themes, and its aims. While several members of the first two waves were aiming for a revolutionary change of society, and were being, to various degrees attracted by leftist parties and ideologies (Tzara being for a while a member of the French Communist Party; Roll a member of the Romanian Communist Party; Paraschivescu, in his youth, a member of the banned Union of Communist Youth; Teodorescu for a while a poet of the proletarian culture variety), someone born in 1940, like Ivănceanu, could no longer sympathize with leftist ideas, for those had taken over the entire social life of the country, and as such had turned into something to be loathed and certainly not to be enthused about by someone who aims for change. Ivănceanu was not alone in using the subversive potential of the avant-garde in a culture in which no open critique was tolerated. He was one of the members of the onirist movement—formed in 1964 and to last only until 1971, when it ceased to be tolerated—with Paraschivescu as mentor and protector (the avant-garde being still considered a decadent bourgeois phenomenon, that had no place in a “socialist” country), which included Dumitru Ţepeneag, Leonid Dimov, Virgil Mazilescu, George Almosnino, and Nora Iuga.

Recurrent themes in Ivănceanu’s poetry are the dead and the poet, and the two are not necessarily that different, for he sometimes asks to join the ranks of the former, so he can truly belong to the latter (“kill me//So I can write poems” (Epistle to Friends)). The absurd, the random, the revolt born out of despair, that are omnipresent (“I was born to say that//The dead man is dead that the boil is a boil” (Hats off), “I know, we’ll be without horses//But Folks we have feet//And, if need be, hands.” (The Great)), are mixed with mock suggestions for change (“The poems written by the dead//Should make their way into primers”, “my friend on four wheels//Do not run over the entire rain” (Epistle to Friends)), made credible by a declaration of a higher calling (“born to cure leprosy”, “born to resurrect the dead” (Hats off)) and one of his own martyrdom (“Don’t//Bury me,//Leave me naked in the middle of the street,//This dead body deserves to be hit by passing cars” (The Execution)).

Ivănceanu published one more volume of poetry, in 1969, as well as three novels, in 1969, 1970, and 1971, with titles indicative of their avant-garde leanings, such as The Vulcaloborg and the Beautiful Beleponja. Having left Romania in 1970 for Vienna, his works ceased to be re-issued inside Romania, according to the logic of the time, which turned all citizens who had decided to turn their backs...