Speak Ana Blandiana poetry and memories of the dictatorship. Even if we want to avoid them, because the poetry was there. “In Ceaucescu’s prisons, there were no pencils. Someone thought about the poem, someone memorized it, and someone tapped on the walls so others in the room could hear it. Morse code“. Poetry was necessary to escape the stifling atmosphere of tyranny, and his verses, even if they now speak of everything else, are marked by these years.
The Romanian writer inaugurated this Friday Cosmopoeticsthe great literary event of Córdoba, with a reading of his verses that will open the door to many other poems by so many authors. Now the door to poetry opens.
This is not the first time that Ana Blandiana, born in Timisoara in 1942 and winner of the Princess of Asturias Prize for the Arts for this year 2024, is in Cosmopoética. “I had participated in many other poetry festivals, but when I arrived at Cosmopoética for the first time, it seemed to me that more magical of everyone and I have a very bright image of this meeting”, he declared before participating.
People consider her “as a representative of Romania”, whether in her country or in others. “In Romania This situation was more complex, because before there was censorship, and we never knew to what extent the poetic message could penetrate the walls of the censorship“, he recalled. The readers had specialized and read the words with great attention.
THE metaphorhe says, “it is a comparison which lacks term, and there was a meeting halfway between the drive and the poet, because the reader had to supply the missing term. That is, the writer said half of it, which was completed by the one who received the text. Difficult, but it was the way to overcome censorship.
“Political correctness is another form of terror, another manifestation of communism”
Poetry requires attentive and intelligent reading, which is not satisfied with what appears. Did the censors have the finesse to capture it? Ana Blandiana reported that there was a complicated process: “There were several levels and I never knew who was in those levels or how many there were. The first was the editor-in-chief of the magazine or book, then the editor-in-chief and, further, various controls in the field. Ministry», he explained, then assured that he had the last word Elena Ceaucescuthe dictator’s wife.
And this era is not exempt from censorship, even if it is much more diffuse. Political correctness inhibits. “The first time I heard about her, it seemed like something aberrant. It couldn’t work in Romania, because we had been manipulated for many decades and fought against censorship. And it was for people of my generation, but young people, those born after 1989, are victims of this trend neo-marxist“, he lamented. Political correctness is “another way of exercising terroranother form of manifestation of Soviet communism, which became specialized.
save the world
Manipulation operates in the sphere he calls “soft”, much gentler, but it is yet another type of manifestation of the Communismand he highlighted Putin’s influence in many places. This is a censorship “much more humiliating, because it was invented by some” intellectuals and in the ancient history of culture, intellectuals fought for freedom, and thus they degrade it.
In the face of all this, there is still poetry, which “cannot stop wars,” but she wondered at a conference if poetry could save the world. “And although it may seem absurd, I think the answer is yes,” he says. It is not only the composed poems in prison, but for his poetry of those years, it was a way of opposing oppression.
“It is also a form of resistance against the degradation of culture, and the strength of endurance through culture is much stronger than we believe,” he declared. It is more necessary than ever, given what is happening. It is also part of European identity, because it was the inhabitants of the continent and their countries who built it.
