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Ion Caraion (pseudonym of Stelian Diaconescu; 1923–1985)
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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roMania | 287 ion caraion (pseudonym of stelian diaconescu; 1923–1985) Caraion has a formidable reputation as a poet in Romania. He was born into extreme poverty in a small village in the Buzău district but left it in order to further his education in Bucharest. He eventually received a degree from the faculty of literature and philosophy from Bucharest University in 1948. By that time he had already made his literary debut as a poet with the volumes Panopticum (1943), Omul profilat pe cer (Man Outlined Against the Sky, 1945), and Cîntece negre (Black Songs, 1946). An outspoken foe of totalitarianism, with a fierce sense of independence, Caraion went into hiding during World War II to avoid arrest by the Gestapo for anti-German articles he had written. Panopticum had already been suppressed by the censors. In 1951, with the Communists already in power, Caraion voluntarily surrendered his editorial position at Scînteia tineretului, the journal of the Communist Youth Union, because of his refusal to renounce articles critical of the new regime’s cultural policies. He was soon arrested and sentenced to death; his wife, Valentina, who was arrested with him, was given a five-year sentence on the grounds of being Caraion’s collaborator because she had typed for him. After serving two years in solitary confinement, Caraion’s sentence was reduced to eleven years at hard labor. Although freed by the amnesty of 1964, he was kept under close surveillance, his manuscripts were destroyed, and it was difficult for him to publish. Notwithstanding such hardships, he did succeed in bringing out a dozen books of poetry after Cîntece negre as well as several volumes of prose, mostly essays. Of particular interest among the latter is the posthumous collection of pamphlets of a passionately antitotalitarian character entitled Insectele tovaraşului Hitler (Comrade Hitler’s Insects, 1982). In 1981, Caraion and his family went into voluntary exile, settling in Lausanne, Switzerland, four years before his death. The oft-noted surreal strangeness of much of Caraion’s poetry may be attributed in part to the circumstances in which he was compelled to write. In a familiar pattern of prison literature, his lack of access to writing materials forced him to compose poems in his own mind and then reconstruct and revise them years later, once free. Many of the poems, consequently, are undated, and some were reprinted several times in different collections, making an accurate chronology for many of them often impossible. The following excerpts are from Caraion’s Cimitrul din stele (The Graveyard in the Stars; Bucharest: Eminescu, 1995), 9, 103, 166, 209, 210—a selection of poems from several of Caraion’s major volumes from 1971 to 1990—and have been translated from Romanian by Harold B. Segel. 288 | roMania from Cimitrul din stele Litanie (Litany) Lord, better had you made me stone: had they passed over me with their wheels and crushed me the autumn carts of smoke rumbling toward barracks Lord, better had you made me stone or night . . . Suveranitate (Sovereignty) under how much cinder of pensive light under how much currency of death injured glory sensual lava in reality he will be the devourer the viscera of music were coming from faraway lands and buying books and no one read the stars and the birds any longer crumbs of fury gild abysses and no one no one heard the cries the meaning the evanescence of meanings Decât mâine (Instead of Tomorrow) I am master of nothing I wrap around an abyss the crushing of that which I lack to fulfill myself I call and drive it away forefeel and chase off its electrical sadistic discharges Oh! Like the blizzard I fear and move toward the poem that will lay me waste that will rain that will burn and freeze over me [18.208.197.243] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:34 GMT) roMania | 289 and on the inside of whom I will freeze I will carbonize I will soften unstick unravel separate rarify pulverize and disappear explaining the new temple and the new passion for destruction lust and fear of the poem that comes like a departure from every place from outside and inside from the far and the immediate like the zero point like the expulsion from Eden after discovering that you were not where you were and that empty is your imagination now empty sound paradise bones hiding defeat time when dispossession and possession begin and the...