Ioan Flora // Andreea Iulia Scridon & Adam J. Sorkin
Ioan Flora
The poet Ioan Flora (1950–2005) was heir to the multicultural character of Southeast Europe. He was born to a Romanian-speaking family in what was then was Yugoslavia, in the polylingual region traditionally known as the Banat (part of Vojvodina province in Serbia these days, though the Banat encompasses some of western Romania as well as a bit of Hungary). Flora was educated locally but after attending the Romanian high school in the town of Vârșeț, a place familiar in his poems, he went to the University of Bucharest and graduated from the Faculty of Letters, having majored in Romanian and French. He has described this period as an immersion in Romanian literary history as well as in a Romanian language more modern than the somewhat archaic Banat dialect he grew up with.
After his time as a student in Bucharest, Flora returned to Yugoslavia where, among other things, he edited a newspaper in Pancevo and established himself as a notable poetic voice. In 1993, during the decade of the Balkan wars that culminated with NATO’s air strikes on Serbia, Flora and his family moved permanently to Bucharest, where he wound up serving the Romanian Writers’ Union as its secretary. Throughout his career, he received numerous awards in Macedonia, Serbia, the Republic of Moldova, and Romania.
It should be unsurprising that, having grown up in Yugoslavia, Flora was also fluent in its official language, Serbian; he translated in full the major 20th-century Serbian poet Vasko Popa into Romanian, the language in which Flora wrote all his own poetry. He shared some of Popa’s acuity for vivid depiction and the surprises and strangeness of the surreal, although Flora’s imagination was more firmly grounded in traditional stories, folk narratives, personal introspection, cultural and familial memory, as well as identifiable places and contemporary and historical events in the actual world. In a sense, it was his use of precise, mimetic details in conjunction with his creative gift and his often wry, sarcastic irony — and sometimes dark comedy — that made him seem a precursor to the prominent postmodernist rebels of 1980s Romanian poetry (the so-called “Blue-jeans Generation”). Flora’s first two books (Waltzes, 1970, and Ivy, 1975) have been described as developing a “quasi-dreamlike vision,” but in 2001, as I was beginning to work on his Medea and Her War Machines (2000; in English, translated by AJS and Alina Cârâc, University of New Orleans Press, 2011 — out of print, alas), Flora told me, during a conversation at the terrace restaurant behind the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest, “I decided early that poetry is made of exact details.” Ultimately, in his poetry, his details are raised far beyond prosaic, everyday specification, simple catalogues of what make up, to use the title of one of his early books, The Physical World (1977). As noted by Traian T. Coșovei, one of the important Bucharest writers of the 80s, Flora’s imagination and surprisingly broad frame of reference combine his “keen senses” and his “stories from an unreal Banat that the author transforms rapidly into…a fascinating Marquesian Macondo, obviously in a subtle register.”
The poems my co-translator, Andreea Iulia Scridon, and I have chosen for this issue of Cæsura derive from Ioan Flora’s last book of poetry (he published 15 books, and an additional small volume came out posthumously). Flora launched his final collection of poems in January 2005. He playfully (or was it provocatively? or both?) titled it, in a skewed reference to the well-known paintings by Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, but in Romanian, with the preposition shockingly changed, Dejun sub iarbă, to echo the phrasing by which these paintings are usually known in English, Luncheon [not on but] Under the Grass. Playful or not, Flora was said to have had premonitions. Soon after the book was published, on February 3, he collapsed and died of a heart attack. I’ve heard that, at the time, a number of writers and critics speculated that his daring book title had possibly provoked his fate.
My co-translator and I are currently finalizing our translation of Ioan Flora’s fascinating and moving Luncheon Under the Grass. The poems on these pages represent the characteristic range of Flora’s sensibility as he developed his poetry throughout his career. The reader will encounter mock-heroic satire and comic burlesque, familial and personal stories, as well as a variety of brief, restrained, thematically suggestive poetic parables.
— Adam J. Sorkin
Casa
Mai întâi l-am visat pe bunicul Sava, rumen în obraji,
dormind într-o casă nouă.
Dormea liniștit și senin, dar se trezise deodată
(ce vedea el în somnul său n-aș putea ști, în visul meu însă
se prăbușise parcă un perete, tavanul nu mai era tavan,
ci un fel de șură căscată le cer)
bunicul se trezise brusc, încercând să se ridice-n picioare.
Apoi l-am visat pe tata. Se făcea că stăm amândoi pe o coamă
de deal și privim scrutător în față, la casă sură, de piatră.
O casă nouă, părând a fi chiar casa mea, cu patru ferestre,
dar strâmbă, și gata să cadă.
Nu-i deloc strâmbă, încerca să mă dumirească tata, n-are cum,
doar e casa ta, ci dacă ar și fi să fie, atunci
află că-i înclinată în toate părțile deodată.
The House
First I dreamt of Grandpa Sava, with his ruddy cheeks,
sleeping in a new house.
He slept quietly and peacefully, but suddenly awoke
(what he saw in his sleep, I couldn’t say, in my dream, however,
it seemed that a wall was falling, the ceiling was no longer a ceiling,
but some sort of barn yawning open towards the sky)
Grandpa awoke abruptly, trying to get to his feet.
Next I dreamt of Dad. He was pretending that we’re both sitting on the crest
of a hill and looking searchingly before us, towards a grey house of stone.
A new house, seeming to be my own house, with four windows,
but cockeyed and ready to collapse.
It’s not crooked at all, Dad tried to comfort me, there’s no way,
it’s your house, and if it must be just as you find it, then
for sure it’s slanted in every part altogether.
Lupta lui Rainbow cu acarienii
(scenă antică)
Cinci ore a durat demonstrația superiorității instalației Rainbow
asupra umilului meu aspirator Electrolux,
cinci ore a ținut să mă lămurească doamna de Sade
de la etajul șapte cum că Rainbow nu este nicidecum ce pare a fi,
un simplu aspirator, cu alte cuvinte:
căci Rainbow (să vedeți, luați aminte, domnul Flora)
Rainbow nu are pungă de hârtie, e pânză, de ce-o fi,
cum au aspiratoarele obișnuite, care înmagazinează și dispersează
praful din casă, ci – un vas cu apă!
Și nu transbordă mizeria din fața televizorului
în vârful mesei sau în castronul cu supă!
Rainbow spală aerul, Rainbow spală perdelele, Rainbow
curăță plapuma, reducând-o la mărimea unui chibrit,
Rainbow spală geamurile, Rainbow nu face
doi pași fără manualul sau îndreptarul de folosință (339 de pagini),
Rainbow, ah! Rainbow.
Dar Rainbow – și aici e marele avantaj, domnul Flora, marele
secret, marea artă, dacă vreți! – Rainbow este, mai ales,
ciuma acarienilor,
știți, acarienii sunt acele creaturi microscopice din familia
arahnidelor, care hrânesc cu epiteliul mort, iar epiteliu
uman se găsește în cantități considerabile, unde altundeva dacă nu
în așternuturi, unde e cald și bine și, fiind cald și bine,
abuzând totodată și de ignoranța cetățeanului de bună credință,
ei ce fac?! prosperă și proliferează, prosperă, prosperă, prosperă!
Într-un un așternut obișnuit sunt circa un milion și jumătate,
la dumneavoastră erau ceva mai mulți, vreo două milione, am verificat,
să știți c-am verificat, uitați-vă atent, vedeți cum arată –
și într-adevăr, doamna de Sade îmî arată o fotografie în șapte
colori, și celofanată, cu doi monștri, vampiri, ai zice,
cu colți incisivi și ascuțiți și ochii, dac-ar fi ochi,
înroșiți și tulburi.
– Iertați-mă, doamnă, am zis într-un târziu, dar știți,
e sâmbătă, trebui să mai fac și piața și, sincer să fiu,
n-am mâncat de-aseară.
– Nu-i nimic, nu-i nimic, m-a asigurat binevoitor doamna de Sade,
îl iau pe Rainbow și plec, poate că e mult 2175 dolari SUA,
dar își merită banii, iar acarienii stau aciuiți
și în fotolii, și în tapițeria scaunelor, în cada de baie,
pe robinete, pe lustră, pe clanță.
Cinci ore a durat lupta lui Rainbow cu aerul,
cinci ore a luptat doamna de Sade de la șapte
cu pungile aspiratorului meu Eletrolux,
cinci ore s-a bătut cu strașnicii acarieni.
La plecarea ei, m-am simțit singur și gol,
singur și gol, într-o lume
pustie.
Rainbow’s Battle with the Acarians
(ancient scene)
Five hours the demonstration of the superiority of the Rainbow installation
over my humble Electrolux vacuum lasted,
five hours it took for Mrs. de Sade from the seventh floor
to convince me that Rainbow is by no means what it seems,
a simple vacuum cleaner, in other words:
for Rainbow (you’ll see, take note, Mr. Flora)
Rainbow has no paper bag, nor a cotton bag, whatever
ordinary vacuum cleaners have, which store and disperse
the house’s dust, it has instead – a bowl of water!
And it doesn’t reload the filth from in front of the TV
to the top of the table or the soup tureen!
Rainbow cleans the air, Rainbow cleans the curtains, Rainbow
cleans the duvet, reducing it to the size of a matchstick,
Rainbow cleans the windows, Rainbow wouldn’t dare
do anything without its instruction manual (339 pages),
Rainbow, ah! Rainbow.
But Rainbow – and here is the greatest advantage, mister Flora, the great
secret, the great art, if you like! – Rainbow is, above all,
the acarians’ plague,
you know, of course, acarians are those microscopic creatures from the arachnid
family, that feed on dead epithelium, and human epithelium
is found in considerable quantities, where else but in the sheets,
where it’s nice and warm and, as it’s nice and warm,
taking utter advantage of the well-meaning citizen’s ignorance,
What do you think they do?! They prosper and proliferate, prosper, prosper, prosper!
In a normal set of sheets there are about a million and a half,
in your sheets there were more, around two million, I checked,
you should know that I checked, look here, look closely and see them –
and, indeed, Mrs. de Sade shows me a photograph in seven
colors, and cellophane, with two monsters, vampires, you might say,
with sharp and pointed fangs and the eyes, if they are indeed eyes,
are red and foggy.
“Forgive me, ma’am,” I finally said, “but you know,
it’s Saturday, I have to do some shopping and, to be honest,
I haven’t eaten since last night.”
“No problem, no problem,” Mrs. de Sade assured me with goodwill,
I’ll take Rainbow and go, maybe 2175 US dollars is a fat sum,
but it’s worth the money, and those acarians sit, ready to pounce,
in the sofas, in the chairs’ upholstery, in the bathtub,
on the sinks, on the chandelier, on the door-handle.
Five hours Rainbow’s battle with the air lasted,
five hours Mrs. de Sade from the seventh floor battled
with the bags of my Electrolux vacuum cleaner,
five hours she battled the vigilant acarians.
When she left, I felt alone and empty,
alone and empty, in a hollow
world.
Strigătul lui Géza în pustiu
Ardei iuți, brânză, dovlecei, ceapă, benzină, butelii, ulei,
oțet, hârtie igienică, scobitori, plită, cosița, lumină,
o treabă, eu aici! striga cât îl țineau bojocii bucătarul
Géza de la Sanatoriul din Vișeu, câtre Primărie;
o treabă! rapid, rapid,
asta nu la mine, primarul primar,
foc de lemne, ploaie, o treabă! butelie, plită,
scriitori aici, nu buștean,
răpede, răpede, azi-mâine face noapte!
Géza, eee! ee! Învărtind, transpirat, din degete
ca un burghiu cu cinci captete, ca un piranha,
altă treabă! molizii de sus sunt sus,
oameni să fim, de ce se cade ei iarna în ape?!
Géza, eee! ee! nu-și punea niciodată pălăria pe dinți,
gătește, servește, gătește,
timp de o lună de ani,
eee! ee! să fim oameni!
— Dar de ce-ai tăiat, miercuri, ceapa mai mare?
— Dar tu de ce o măsori cu șublerul?
— De ce am distribuit, cum spuneai? distribuit?
inegal cartofii în zeamă?
Ardei iuți, ceapă, cartofi, alo! alo! aloooo!
răpede, răpede,
domni scriitori la Făina, Géza de la Sanatoriu,
eee! ee! o treabă!
primarul primar, azi-mâine face noapte!
Primăria zice că firul, că nu se-aude, Primăria
zice că nu!
Géza’s Cry in the Wilderness
Hot peppers, cheese, pumpkin, onions, gasoline, gas can, oil
vinegar, toilet paper, toothpicks, stove, scythe, light,
a job, here I am! the cook shouted at the top of his lungs
Géza from the Sanatorium in Vişeu, to City Hall;
a job! hurry, hurry,
that’s not for me, Mister Mayor,
a wood fire, rain, a job! gas can, stove,
writers here, not a log,
hurry up, hurry up, today it’s already tonight!
Géza, heeey! heey! Going round and round, sweating, from the frost
like a drill with five bits, like a piranha,
another job! the spruces up above are up above,
let’s be human, why in winter do they fall into the water?!
Géza, heeey! heey! he never put his hat on his teeth,
cook, serve, cook,
for a whole month,
heeey! heey! let’s be human!
“But why did you cut the bigger onion on Wednesday?”
“But you, why measure it with calipers?”
“Why did I distribute, as you said? distribute?
the potatoes unequally in the soup?
Hot peppers, onions, potatoes, hello! hello! helloooo!
hurry up, hurry up
Gentlemen writers at Făina, Géza from the Sanatorium,
heeey! heey! a job!
Mister Mayor, today it’s already tonight!”
The City Hall says that the phone line, that it can’t be heard, the City Hall
says no!
Spălarea apei
La Adriatica, pentru a purifica la sânge apa, se-aduc
o dată la patruzeci de ani, anghile îmi povestea într-o vară
prietenul meu din Macedonia, Risto V.
Se-aduc vara târziu din tenebrele Drimului Negru, se țin
câteva săptămâni numai cu pâine și sare, într-un fel de acvariu
înghețat, pentru a fi slobozite apoi în negura unor cisterne uriașe.
Îngropate de vii, anghilele fulgeră și seceră totul: de la râme,
viermi și insecte, până la viruși și amoebe.
În largul, în imperiul ei de beznă, anghila se bucură, timp de
o jumătate de veac, de libertate ca de un câmp lichid,
provincial dar perfect.
Când moare, corpul ei întunecat se pulverizează pe pereții
cisternei, simple mărgele de brumă
neagră și grea.
The Washing of the Water
In the Adriatic, in order to purify the water through and through,
eels are brought in once every forty years, my friend from Macedonia,
Risto V., told me one summer.
They are brought in late summer from the darkness of the Danube Region,
kept for a few weeks with only bread and salt, in a sort of frozen
aquarium, only to be released into the fog of great tanks.
Buried alive, the eels flash and harvest everything: from maggots
and worms and insects to viruses and amoebae.
At sea, in its empire of darkness, the eel, for the span
of half a century, enjoys freedom as it would a field of wetness,
provincial but perfect.
When it dies, its dark body pulverizes on the walls
of the tank in simple beads of frost,
black and heavy.
Advocaat
Sticla de lichior Advocaat, vol van smaak, adică dulce și cremos,
ce zace de mai multe zile pe una din polițele bibliotecii
(ingrediente: alcool, zahăr, ouă, arome, emulsii E 406, E 466)
sticla de 70 Cl îmi amintește de cinematograful sătesc
al copilăriei, de barul de la intrare, unde trona uriașul Ovidiu
(care ne dădea voie, nouă, imberbilor bărbați, să intrăm pe blat
la pauză, dar numai în ultimele rânduri)
unde vajnicii mei săteni își beau zilnic asă-zisul aer-lichior,
o spermoasă licoare, semănând cu acea a Distileriilor
Regale Olandeze.
Sticla de Advocaat, filmele cu Stive Rives, Glenn Ford, Gina
Lolobrigida, John Wayne, Giulliano Gemma,
paharul cu bere de-aseară,
obstacol insidios care se interpune între dorința și pasiune,
păianjenul cu chip de om, păianjenul cu cap de câine
ce-mi bate uneori în ferești.
Advocaat
The bottle of the liqueur Advocaat, vol van smaak, meaning sweet and creamy,
that has stood for many days on one of the book shelves
(ingredients: alcohol, sugar, eggs, flavors, emulsions E 406, E 466),
the 70 cl bottle reminds me of the village cinema
of my childhood, the bar by the entrance, where the giant Ovidiu reigned
(who allowed us, not yet bearded men, to enter without paying
at the intermission, but only in the last few rows)
where my daring villagers drink their so-called air-liquor every day,
a sperm-like liqueur, resembling that of the Royal Dutch
Distilleries.
The Advocaat bottle, the movies with “Stive” Reeves, Glenn Ford, Gina
Lollobrigida, John Wayne, Giuliano Gemma,
the glass with last night’s beer,
insidious obstacle that interferes between desire and passion,
the spider with a man’s face, the spider with a dog’s head
which sometimes taps on my window.
Via
lui Ioan Groșan
Moartea mea umbla desculță prin vie. Nu vroia nimic,
nu bea, nu cosea,
nu lega, cu fire argintii, vița în floare.
Era în pielea goală și semăna cu un vulcan stins.
Era și pământ roșu, amestecat cu pietriș.
În clipa aceea, moartea mea se preumbla desculță prin vie.
Eu eram departe, în munți, tăiam fagi și pini și-i încărcam
în vagoane.
Beam rom în ibricul acela de aramă, ostenindu-mă să privesc,
printre trunchiuri, cerul.
Moartea mea umbla desculță prin vie.
The Vineyard
to Ioan Groșan
My death walked barefoot through the vineyard. It didn’t want anything,
didn’t drink, didn’t sew,
didn’t tie up, with silver threads, the vines in flower.
It was naked and looked like an extinct volcano.
It was also red earth, mixed with pebbles.
At that moment, my death strolled barefoot through the vineyard.
I was far away, in the mountains, cutting beeches and pines and loading them
in wagons.
I drank rum from a long-handled brass ibrik, struggling to see,
among their trunks, the sky.
My death walked barefoot through the vineyard.
Omul de pe casă
Era unul pe casă, de meșterea burlane și țigle și cuiburi
de bufnițe și cocostârci.
– Vezi să nu cazi de-acolo, îi tot spuneau sătenii
cu vălătuci și pălării acoperindu-le auzul.
– Ușor de zis, le răspundea el, privind fix înspre munți,
dar și de cad, tot în pământ m-opresc.
Râdeau pălăriile de el, în timp ce urca liniștit
pe axa imaginară a privirii,
coborând,
subțiindu-se de-a dreptul.
– Numai în sus să n-o iau, mai spuse omul nostru, acolo
nu mai e capăt.
The Man on the House
There was a man on the house, a craftsman of pipes and tiles and the nests
of owls and herons.
“Make sure you don’t fall from there,” the villagers kept telling him
with hats and earflaps muffling their hearing.
“Easy for you to say,” he replied, staring at the mountains,
“yet if I fell, the ground would always stop me.”
The hats laughed at him as he climbed quietly
along the imaginary axis of vision,
receding,
getting skinnier and skinnier.
“Only high above I shouldn’t go,” our man added, “there’s
nothing to stop you above.”
La moartea lui Stalin
In primăvara aceea, istorisea cuviosul Ieronim, netezindu-și,
așezat, fuiorul din barbă
(nici nu se mistuiseră măcar urzicile și ștevia
în mațele lighioanei înfometate din om)
în seara aceea a venit poruncă de sus, de la stăpânire,
că să bată zi noapte toate clopotele, mici și mari,
în oropsită Țara Moldovei.
Și au bătut, și au bătut clopotele la Siret, la Bahlui,
la Prut, la Bistrița, la Putna, numai că
trei clopote împărătești, de la trei biserici împărătești
s-au spart, s-au fărâmat de s-au făcut sclipe și pulbere,
iar publerea îmbrățișă chip de vâltoare verde și roșie,
despicând cerul timp de o săptămână.
În primăvara aceea, mai spunea cuviosul Ieronim, înghețau
broaștele pe fundul fântânilor secate, iar pereții mormintelor
(dacă le deschideai)
erau căptușiți cu iarbă neagră și creață.
Upon the Death of Stalin
That spring, the pious Ieronim recounted, smoothing out,
as he sat, the flax of his beard
(neither the nettles nor the sorrel had disappeared
in the guts of the famished beast inside man)
that evening the command came from on high, from the authorities,
to ring all the bells day and night, the small and the huge,
in the oppressed country of Moldova.
And they rang and rang the bells at Siret, along the Bahlui,
at the Prut, at Bistrița, at Putna, except
that three imperial bells, at three imperial churches,
had been smashed, they’d been ground to shreds and dust,
and the dust embraced the face of the swirling green and red winds,
cleaving the skies for a week.
That spring, the pious Ieronim went on, frogs froze
at the bottom of the dried up wells, and the walls of the graves
(if you opened them)
were coated with curly, black grass.
Adam J. Sorkin has published sixty-five books of contemporary Romanian literature in English. His recent co-translations include, A Spider’s History of Love by Mircea Cărtărescu (New Meridian Arts), Lavinia and Her Daughters by Ioana Ieronim (Červená Barva Press), and The God's Orbit by Aura Christi (Mica Press, UK), all published in 2020. He is the primary translator of Carmen Firan and Adrian Sângeorzan’s book of poems Quarantine Songs (New Meridian Arts, 2021). In 2011 and 2012, respectively, Sorkin published Ioan Flora’s Medea and Her War Machines (UNO Press) and The Flying Head (Toad Press) a chapbook of Flora’s work.
Andreea Iulia Scridon is a Romanian-American writer and translator. Her translation of Ion D. Sîrbu’s series of short stories, a representative of subversive writing under the communist regime, is forthcoming in 2021 with ABPress. Her co-translations with Adam J. Sorkin of the Romanian poet Traian T. Coșovei are due out with Broken Sleep Books. Scridon’s chapbook of her own poetry is appearing with Broken Sleep Books in 2022, as is a poetry book with MadHat Press.
