Among the Romanian writers who were
\nat the height of their creativity during communism, poet and translator Mircea
\nIvanescu was a special presence. He was born on 26 March 1931 in Bucharest. He
\nstarted publishing poetry in the late 1960s and was part of the same generation
\nof poets who were very much appreciated by the public and critics, such as
\nNichita Stanescu. Ivanescu’s influence in poetry, however, extended beyond his
\ngeneration, manifesting in the 1980s, up until the 2000s. Meanwhile, he was
\nalso celebrated as a great translator of English language poetry, as he
\nproduced the most appreciated translations from authors such as James Joyce,
\nWilliam Faulkner, Ezra Pound, or Sylvia Plath. His life was spent in a universe
\nof books, pervaded by music, in search of the answer to the question What is
\ntruth?, but also under the shadow of the obsession with death. <\/p>\n
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When he was 11, his brother Emil,
\nthen 22 years old, killed himself, leaving Mircea Ivanescu scarred by the
\ndisappearance of his beloved and talented brother. According to poet Radu
\nVancu, who wrote the book ‘Mircea Ivanescu. The Poetry of Absolute Discretion’,
\nhe suffered from survivor’s guilt, and was a man without a biography, because
\nliterature was his life. On the outside, he had a rather plain existence. He
\ngraduated from the School of Letters at the University of Bucharest, then went
\non to work at The World magazine and
\nthe Agerpres news agency. In 1980 he moved to Sibiu, where he worked for the Transylvania magazine. He lived there
\nuntil his death in 2011. Poet Radu Vancu told us that his universe, heavily
\nreflected in his poetry, consisted of literature, music, his friends, his wife
\nStela, but also his cats:<\/p>\n
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When he became an adult, his poetry
\nwas pervaded by musical references, especially Chopin, his and his brother’s favourite
\ncomposer. For him, music was not something relaxing, having to do with
\ncelebrating existence, on the contrary, it had funereal overtones, adding to
\nthe secret death that is present throughout Mircea Ivanescu’s poetry. On the
\nsurface, his poetry, as poet Mircea Cartarescu observed, sounds like a cafe
\nconcert poetry. It does not give the impression that something dramatic is
\ngoing on beneath the surface. However, if you read it like a detective, slowly
\nand obsessively, you notice that it bears an obsession with death and truth
\nthrough and through.<\/p>\n
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or a long time during the communist
\nregime, Mircea Ivanescu’s poetry was somehow peripheral, as the columnists who
\nwere writing weekly reviews very much favoured other poets’ more metaphorical
\nand more flamboyant style. With details on that, here is Radu Vancu once again.
\n<\/p>\n
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His
\nsuccess with the critics occurred during the communist regime. From the very
\nfirst volumes, the most authorized voices rated him as a great poet. I have in
\nmind critics Matei Calinescu, Ion Negoitescu, Lucian Raicu. Unfortunately, the
\nmost influential columnists of the time did not perceive him similarly, that is
\nNicolae Manolescu and Eugen Simion. Manolescu, however, admitted, in the late
\n1980s, that Ivanescu wrote a great inter-textual poetry. Yet there was another
\nexplanation for that, which has nothing to do with the critics’ response to his
\npoetry at that time, but rather with the nature of his poetry. He wrote an
\napparently non-metaphorical, biographical, and narrative kind of poetry. So his
\npoetry rather resembles that written by the younger generations, launched in
\nthe 1980s and in 2000, so there is no wonder that they especially perceived him
\nas a great poet, acknowledging his major influence over their own work. <\/p>\n
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After
\n1990, the change in perception of Mircea Ivanescu’s poetry did not change the
\npoet himself. Speaking about that, here is Radu Vancu again. <\/p>\n
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Actually,
\nhe sort of opted for keeping himself to himself, as regards literature. He
\nhadn’t been writing any kind of poetry since 1997. So in the last 14 years of
\nhis life he was not active as a poet. I used to fetch him paper clips from the
\nliterary press that emphasized those changes in the way people perceived his
\nwork. He dealt with that in a very ironic manner. I would tell him an important
\ncritic named him a great poet, and he would ask if that critic had used the
\nword ‘genius’ as well. My answer would be ‘no’, so he would say something like ‘then
\nit’s useless’. It was his way of protecting himself from such excessive praise.
\nHe wasn’t fishing for and was no interested in being praised. Another tragedy had occurred in his life: in
\n1999, his wife, Stela, died, and it was to her that he had dedicated all his
\nvolumes of poetry. Her death made him lose any interest in living. Success did
\nnot change him. He remained the same generous man, with an extraordinary cult
\nof friendship, yet with a perception about himself that was extremely
\nself-deprecating and self-ironical. In fact, his modestly was
\nself-destructive.<\/p>\n
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On
\nJuly 21, 2011, Mircea Ivanescu died at the age of 80. He left behind lots of
\ntranslated works and poetry which are still worth discovering. <\/p>\n
\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Among the Romanian writers who were at the height of their creativity during communism, poet and translator Mircea Ivanescu was a special presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":130317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45210],"tags":[45474],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-169007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rri-encyclopaedia","tag-mircea-ivanescu"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n