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Marin Sorescu (1936-1996) | |
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Prolific Romanian poet, playwright, novelist and essayist, an unconformist explorer of metaphysical parables behind everyday experience. Marin Sorescu ironic voice emerged in Romanian literature in the 1960s. He became one of the most widely read and translated modern poets of his country. Sorescu was also a Nobel Prize candidate in literature. "Ever since, tradition demands, Marin Sorescu was born in the village of Bulzesti, Dolj, in southern Romania. His parents, Stefan and Nicolita, were farmworkers. When Sorescu was three years old, his father died. Sorescu attended secondary school in Craiova, and after the war he continued his studies in a nearby village and in a military school in Predeal. In 1955 Sorescu entered the University of Iasi, and received his B.A. in philology in 1960. His diploma paper dealt with the poet, novelist and essayist Tudor Arghezi (1880-1880), whose rich poetic style became widely imitated. At the university Sorescu contributed to the literary magazine Viata student easca, editing it from 1960 to 1962. After moving to Bucharest, Sorescu married Virginia Seitan. In 1963 he became the editor of the literary journal Luceafarul, where he published his first poems. Between 1966 and 1972 Sorescu served as editor-in-chief of the Animafilm Cinematographic Studios. In 1971-72 Sorescu participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. A bilingual edition of his verse, Ram = Frames, 25 Poems, translated by Roy MacGregor, appeared in 1972. In 1973-74 and 1990 Sorescu was a visiting writer in West Berlin. From 1978 Sorescu edited the literary review Ramuri and in 1990 he founded a new journal, Literatorui. Sorescu was also director of the Romanian Writer Publishing House and in 1993 he was appointed Minister of Culture. As a result of his long time interest in art, Sorescu had one-man exhibitions in museums. His paintings were shown first time in the Art Museum of Brasov in 1988. Marin Sorescu died of liver cancer on December 8, 1996, in Bucharest. His farewell collection of verse, The Bridge, was published posthumously in 1997. Sorescu's first book, Singur printre poeti (1964), was a collection of poetic parodies and pastiches of conventional lyrical expressions. The work was an immediate success. It was followed by Poeme. Versuri. Parodii (1965), Moartea ceasului (1966), Poeme (1967), and Tineretea lui Don Quijote (1968, Don Quijote's Tender Years). Sorescu's ironic tone developed into more serious direction in demystifying the romantic classical themes of love, death, and faith. Sorescu often drew on history, mythology, and the tradition of the absurd. His existentialist themes, at the same time universal and subjective, placed his work in the wide context of the avant-garde. Noteworthy, not only in Romania, but also in other East European countries, its anti-totalitarian tactics united a whole generation of writers. In the center of Sorescu's poems is the author himself - he is as much an observer as an observed. In 'Perseverance he wrote: "I shall walk beside all things / Till all things / Come to me." Mostly Sorescu managed to avoid direct conflicts with authorities, although in the early 1980s he was sentenced to three months of house arrest and he had problems in publishing his works. Some 150 pages were cut from his large novel, Trei dinti din fata, which appeared in 1977. "Poetry must be concise, almost algebraic," Sorescu once said. Sorescu used simple, straightforward language, but within the minimalist framework, his poetry refused to succumb to any simple or "correct" interpretation. Sorescu probed fundamental questions about human life which he do not pretend to know the answers. He saw that in mass society wonder has been eliminated: "Each traveller in the tram / Looks identical to the one who sat there before him / On that very seat." The Nobel writer Seamus Heaney has pointed out in his introduction to Sorescu's Hands Behind My Back (1991), that behind the author's subversive "throwaway charm and poker-faced subversiveness, ... there is a persistent solidarity with the unregarded life of the ordinary citizen, a willingness to remain at eye-level and on a speaking terms with common experience". With Iona (1965, Johan), Paraliserul (1970, The Verger), two one-man plays, and Matca (1973, The Matrix), about creation and destruction, Sorescu established his reputation as a major modern playwright. The trilogy was published in England under the title The Thirst of the Salt Mountain (1985). Sorescu's dramas were also produced widely in the West, among others Jonah in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Finland. In the 1970s Sorescu started to compose historical dramas. "For the dramatist, history is like a bone to a dog," Sorescu said in the preface of Vlad Dracula, the Impaler (1978). The play drew parallels between medieval Romania and Sorescu's own times. However, Sorescu's Prince Vlad had nothing to with Bram Stoker's Dracula or modern vampires of the popular culture - Vlad is a cruel, tormented figure, who eventually plans to impale himself between his victims. Sorescu received several awards, including the Writers' Union Prize in 1965, 1968, and 1974, the International Poetry Festival Gold Medal, Naples (1969), the Romania Academy Prize first time in 1970 and then several other times, the Poetry Prize of the Academia delle Muze, Florence (1978), the International Fernando Riello Prize, Madrid (1983), the Herder prize, Austria (1991). Since 1983 Sorescu was a corresponding member of the Mallarmé Academy. In 1991 he was appointed member of the Romanian Academy. For further reading: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 4, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); The Wintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, ed. by J.D. McClatchy (1996); World Authors 1985-1990, ed. by Vineta Colby (1995); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993) - For further information: Marin Sorescu - Marin Sorescu Foundation - Romania-On-Line: Marin Sorescu, Writer (1936-1997) Selected works:
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