Ana Blandiana, born in 1942 in Timisoara, is one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Romanian poets. She has published fourteen books of poetry, two books of short stories, seven books of essays and one novel. Her work has been translated into twenty-six languages and collected in forty-seven books of poetry and prose to date.
A prominent opponent of the Ceausescu regime, her daring, outspoken poems, along with her courageous attitude in the defense of ethical values, has made her a legendary figure in Romanian literature. She suffered various reprisals and prohibitions under two Communist dictatorships, and three bans on her writing (1959-64, 1985, 1988-89). Over the years, her works have become symbols of an ethical consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian government.
Blandiana was co-founder and president of the Civic Alliance from 1990, an independent non-political organisation that fought for freedom and democratic change. She also re-founded and became president of the Romanian PEN Club, and in 1993, under the aegis of the European Community, she created the Memorial for the Victims of Communism, a research centre for historical studies. Blandiana was awarded the highest distinction of the French Republic, the Légion d’Honneur (2009), and the US State Department acknowledged her with the Romanian Women of Courage Award (2014). Blandiana was awarded the European Poet of Freedom Prize (2016), for her book of poems My Native Land A4.
In English, an anthology of Blandiana’s poems, The Hour of Sand, was published by Anvil Press (UK) in 1990. A selection of her poems translated by Seamus Heaney appeared in the anthology, When the Tunnels Meet, ed. John Farleigh (Bloodaxe, 1996). Her most recent collection of poetry, My Native Land A4, (Bloodaxe, 2014) translated by Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea will be followed by The Sun of Hereafter & Ebb of the Senses (2017).
Selected poems
by Ana Blandiana
Everyone – the city, the country, the planet –
Was asleep.
After all,
What else could they do,
I was moved
As I watched them sleeping:
Some of them were elegant and graceful,
Others were rude, sprawling over the rest,
Others tossing and turning, wracked by nightmares
And remorse for not being awake,
Others, though, were happy
To have finally managed,
With sleeping pills, with yoga,
To fall into a slumber.
An ocean of inert bodies –
Stretching over streets, valleys, mountains
To the horizon –
Across whose waves anyone
(As long as they were awake
Or walking in their sleep at least)
Could make their way
(But to what?),
An ocean with no shores, motionless,
Almost dead.
Almost dead?
And suddenly a mad fear filled me
That they may not be able to wake up
At dawn,
That by then they may forget the gestures of waking,
That they even may forget they’re asleep,
That ultimate test of being.
And I began to shout at them –
I begged, I implored,
Don’t forget that you’re asleep,
Remember
That you’re still alive…
Copyright © 2021 by Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea (translators), translated from the Romanian written by Ana Blandiana, Five Books, Bloodaxe Books