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Self-Portrait

Lucian Blaga is as mute as a swan.
In his homeland
a creature’s snow stands for the word.
His spirit is in quest
in age-old mute quest
since all times
and up to the ultimate bounds, without rest.
He is in quest of the water of which the rainbow drinks.
He is in quest of the water
of which the rainbow
drinks its beauty and non-being.

poem by Lucian Blaga from Unsuspected Steps (1943), translated by Dan Duţescu
Added by Dan Costinaş
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The lie is the vacation of truth.

classic quote by Lucian Blaga
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Among the Romanian poets, I feel closer to Lucian Blaga, because I believe in the immortality of the Romanian village.

Camelia Oprița in WordPress.com (6 September 2016)
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The poet: A blood donor at the hospital of words.

classic aphorism by Lucian Blaga from The Élan of the Island (1977), translated by Dan Costinaş
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Love is the second smile of our tragedy. Yet maybe the very first.

classic aphorism by Lucian Blaga from The Discobolus (1945), translated by Dan Costinaş
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Kierkegaard: The Don Quixote of religion.

famous aphorism by Lucian Blaga, translated by Dan Costinaş
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The mother tongue of the passions has no syntax.

classic aphorism by Lucian Blaga, translated by Dan Costinaş
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I Am Not a Man who Does Things

There are so many of you, men who do things,
everywhere in the streets, under the sky, roofs.
Only I am here purposeless, infamous.
only good for drowning in water.

But I am waiting, have been waiting for a long time
for some wholly good, wholly honest passerby to say to him:
Oh, don‘t turn and look at me,
Oh, don‘t condemn my immobility.
I grow among you, but shaded by my hands
the mystic fruit ripens in another place.
Don‘t curse me, don‘t curse me!

Friend of deep things,
companion of silence,
I play above the doing.
Sometimes with a flute of ancestral bone
I sens myself to death as a song.

Questioning, my brother looks at me,

[...] Read more

poem by Lucian Blaga from In the Great Passage (În marea trecere) (1924), translated by Roy MacGregor-Hastie
Added by Dan Costinaş
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The Roman Cemetery

Abused have been the Romans
by certain scholars of more recent times
for not creating metaphysics
like other glorious nations,
but only aqueducts, roads, colosseums, forums,
the eternal city, castra, border, earthwork.
Abused have been the Romans
for building only houses, with atria
receiving daylight from above,
and with the warning on their doorsills: cave canem.

If fate would have you come to Rome some day
and deep into the countryside, my friend, along the Via Apia
you were to wander,
you would then understand, oh, how unjust the balance is
in which people and peoples weigh
each other’s hearts and virtues. For you would see a Way
unrolling on and on into the landscape,
stone after stone, all fitting,
a Way lined left and right

[...] Read more

poem by Lucian Blaga, translated by Dan Duţescu
Added by Dan Costinaş
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The body is the soul's edge.

classic aphorism by Lucian Blaga from The Discobolus (1945), translated by Dan Costinaş
Added by Dan Costinaş
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