Exista momente sarbatoresti pentru o cultura. Public aici, cu mare bucurie, elogioasa recenzie semnata de Matt Mac Donald in “Glasgow Review of Books” a volumului marii poete Ana Blandiana aparut in 2014 in Anglia in traducerea realizata de Paul Scott Derrick si Viorica Patea. Intitulata “My Native Land A4″, cartea este o marturisire despre iubire si adevar, despre rezistenta spiritului atunci cand materia se destrama, despre suferinta si divinitate. Poeta stie ce inseamna supliciul tacerii impusa de teroare, vocea ei este una a sperantei ca, dincolo de efemer si perisabil, exista cel secret imperiu al vesniciei pe care doar Poezia il poate face sesizabil. Pentru Ana Blandiana, o existenta fara adevar este una damnata, falsificata, specioasa. Versurile ei sunt tot atatea chemari la transcenderea a tot ce este impur si injositor in numele unei superbe nobleti a gandului si a sufletului.
“Coming to this collection as an outsider, to both the native language of the poems and the native culture, may at first appear a fool’s errand. Commentary on poems which will be so completely grounded in the timeline of Romania and it’s often tumultuous recent past, from a Western poet with a cultural normativity that has been untouched in generations may seem incongruous, but there is something that this collection explores which in fact make this commentary more receptive than may at first have been expected.
Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea’s translation of Ana Blandiana’s beautiful and entrancing collection consists of deftly composed vignettes full of emotive moments, captured and released. What can be felt most keenly from this collection, from one of the most engaging yet ethereal poets of the 21st Century, is the notion of space.
Gaps dominate these poems. This collection, perhaps more than her others, deals with the distance between the country we imagine we are proud of, and the country we have to deal with when we open our doors. In ‘Between Him and Me’, she puts these gaps front and centre, wistfully proscribed as part of a discussion about the distance between the poet and the tree that gives her her pages:
There’s a silence so enormous
That it contains everything.
These silences that Blandiana explores are not external to her, they are part of her, they are her history, her present, her future. A deep and resonant feeling for the silences in her world is shown in every poem. The words echo with tremors of shifting theological attitudes. They shake with the crush and intolerance of a totalitarianism that was not merely viewed from afar but that was endured, rebelled against, and satirised.
The title of the collection, My Native Land A4, shows something of her overall aim: Can you fit a country, an origin, on a sheet of A4 paper? This is the question to which Blandiana is attempting to find a solution. And I think her answer is yes. It cannot be done completely at one time or by one person. But if we all filled our A4 pages with our countries, the atlas we built would show so much more links than divisions, would create so much connection, could link the most antipodean people. This atlas would show that even though we grow in different soil, there is so much that can be shared simply with words.
