tly, during the last 20 years, some Romanian writers have been translated and have ended up achieving a certain level of validation through Europe.
The internet and all
the new possibilities of communication support the visibility of Romanian
literature/poetry as an important piece in the European puzzle. I think that,
despite its local flavor, recent Romanian literature/poetry of today is more
synchronized with what is written everywhere else, because many Romanian
writers have travelled much more than they could in the communist era. They’ve
made contact with other writers from all over the world, and they’ve also
obtained access to international bibliographical resources. So, even though it
illustrates the turmoils, frustrations and pains of a society borne out of a
dictatorship, Romanian literature/poetry is somehow alive and authentic, and
has that universal potential that’s already produced a deserving echo beyond
Romanian readers.
The improved profile
of Romanian literature and poetry throughout the world hasn’t just come from
institutional/official initiatives; I think it’s also come through all the
interpersonal connections that writers themselves can make with the literary
milieus of other cultural spaces. In the excellent book Romanian Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury 2018), it’s
argued that “small” literatures are “parts and details of the general
landscape”, and they deserve the same attention as “central” literatures. Each
local literature is a “world literature”, and belongs to the world.
When did you first
become interested in poetry?
The first attraction
was during high school. I was rather a sad teenager, too serious and
melancholy, with thousands of questions in my head. I studied at a nursing
high-school, so I witnessed a great deal of suffering early in life by caring
for ill people in the hospital practice. it was inevitable that I’d look for
answers and meanings. We were also in the middle of a dictatorship that heavily
censored the media, so the most accessible tools for finding answers were
books.
That was the way I
started to read poets in the public library – in excellent translations and in
bilingual editions – belonging to other cultural spaces, all the amazing poets
that I hadn’t heard of at school.
I felt that poetry
displayed a diversity of forms and styles that brought to my eyes something
fascinating and difficult to define, something that was very much related to
the essence of life, that I had not seen in other fields of knowledge, or even
in other arts. It fed the emotional parts of my life, which I was always
looking for at that time.
That strange feeling
that poetry contained subtle truths about life, which in most cases
contradicted the official slogans, made me continue the feverish exploration,
and even motivated me to write my first poems. I started to say in poetry what
I felt I could not say by any other means. And of course my first lines were in
accordance with my sad mood, sentiments like,
All the trees have blossomed at the dissection room’s window.
What attracts you to
poetry today?
Today I am still
attracted to poetry, both reading it and writing it, but I’m especially
attracted to what I like to call poezie trăită (“lived” or
“unwritten” poetry). That is, writing about current lived experiences. To give
an example, I like to write poems from the perspective of a traveler, so I also
like to travel properly and to live the traveling mood. I feel that any poetry
can give life a special meaning, but “lived poetry” has such an intensity that
it’s able to multiply the real experience of life. This is among the most
precious gifts that life can offer to a human being. Therefore, what draws me
to poetry today is mainly the chance to live poetically, which is actually the
chance to live as a human.
In recent years, your
poetry has been translated into English. How do you feel about this, and what
do these translations add to or take away from the originals?
I am fortunate that my
poetry has aroused the interest of an excellent translator like Cristina Savin
in recent years (see links below), and her translations of my poetry
have been published by English language journals, in Australia and elsewhere,
including attention from TransCollaborate, which honors me.
It’s an opportunity
that not many poets have – believe me, I know. During the past few years, in my
attempts to go out into the world, I had to do self-translations. So I managed,
on my own, the feat of publishing in some journals in the USA and in the UK, as
well as getting some literary residencies in Europe, but now I think that these
new translations, in contrast, look more professional, and they are very
encouraging for me.
The translations make
me think that the poetry I write is actually addressed to people from
everywhere, not necessarily to Romanian readers only, and that is a great
feeling. In addition, I could say that the translations have influenced my
writing. They often change my perspective while writing, and the poems acquire
new nuances that enrich them. The poetic substance is not “lost in
translation”, as they say, and I find this illustrates the idea that poetry is
not first a matter of language, but rather one of the capacity to see life.
Since 2019, some of
your poems have been collaboratively translated into English, including several
versions of your “pandemic” poem Ecuaţie Cu Multe Necunoscute (“Equation
with many variables”) What do you see as the main value of collaborative
translations? Do you feel they are “accurate” translations? Do you feel that
they “serve” the original?
I would say that
simple acts of socialization and communication over poetry are very important
for the participants in collaborative translation. The communication I’ve
witnessed is highly qualitative, because there are two types of experiences
that are mixed: that of poetry being translated, and that of people – poets,
translators, scholars, people from non-literary professions, people belonging
to different cultural spaces – having the opportunity to learn about each
other, to share ideas, variants, alternatives and to explore together a special
universe, not to mention sharing humor, which sparkles all the time. And the
result, the creation of new (sometimes multiple) versions of the poems/stories
in another language, is quite a great accomplishment. It’s the result of
serious play mixed with work. You suddenly realize that all the variants are
suitable and that the translation can re-create the original poem in different
ways, without deviating harmfully from the original.
Workshops of this
kind, including that one in which I participated, were pleasant and useful for
me, because I understood (yet one more time) the possibility of poetry to say
the same things differently. I am grateful to TransCollaborate for the interest
they’ve shown in deciphering my poem and in giving to it a new sound,
(actually, five new sounds).
What do you see as the
possibilities of collaborative translation for poetry?
I see an increase in
the volume of the translations. I also see chances for good poets who write in
languages that are not internationally familiar to become known more quickly to
a wider audience.
Collaborative
translation is actually a very efficient tool to allow people from different
places in the world to get close to each other and to learn what poetry is
really made of, what is behind the ability to combine some words on a
paper-sheet. This is because the details that one can see in a text are put in
the discussion all the time and the process of re-creating in another language
a certain poetic substance that a poem contains becomes very efficient in a
shorter time.
I think poetry needs
to be used more in these kinds of collaborative activities (including in
schools) because the collaborative process is a much more relaxing way in which
– why not? – people can spend their time. In addition, the collaborative
translation process makes the poetry itself more friendly and accessible to
more people. So, I see also an increase in the number of those who decide to
get close to poetry.
Vasile Baghiu is a Romanian poet, novelist and essayist of many
volumes – among them: Taste of Alienation, Fever, Life Plans, Assisted
Breathing. He coined the concept of poetic chimerism, a cross between bovarysme
and literature, defined as a tendency to escape everyday realities and to
create a parallel universe. Baghiu has been awarded writers-in-residence grants
in Germany, Austria, Scotland and Switzerland. Several of his poems
(self-translations) can be read in magazines and anthologies such as Magma
Poetry, The Penmen Review, Poetic Diversity, The Blue House, Subtle Tea, The
Orange Room Review, L.A. Melange, also in the poetry collection Transatlantic
Crossings: The Constant Language of Poetry (USA, 2006). For the last years,
many poems of him have been featured, in translations, in literary magazines
and e-zine in Australia, such as The Cordite Poetry Review, The AALITRA Review,
Bordertown (TransCollaborate), Poetry in Process, Parallel texts. Words
reflected, Coolabah. Baghiu had in the past diverse work experiences: nursing,
journalism, teaching , and he works now as a psychologist in the health
promotion domain.
To learn more:
“Afterlives #2: Poetry by and inspired by Vasile
Baghiu” A TransCollaborate Zine
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