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Entries from June 15th, 2011

Poetry in translation: Mihai Eminescu (LXXXIII) – Ai nostri tineri (The Nation’s Youth)

June 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on Poetry in translation: Mihai Eminescu (LXXXIII) – Ai nostri tineri (The Nation’s Youth) · Diaspora, PEOPLE, Poetry, Translations

The Nation’s Youth

(Mihai EMINESCU)

The Nation’s Youth, to Paris go to study

The art of tying round its neck a tie.

And so, to demonstrate at home the mindset,

Of being wiser than a half-baked pie.

*

In town, the down-and-outs look up astounded

To see them twist their whiskers in their carriage,

Or, gripping with their teeth a long Havana

When traipsing up and down, along the Passage.

*

Their nasal vowels smirk their clownish faces:

They prop the pillars of cafes and brothels

To show they do not earn a living, they parade it.

*

Yet all these air-heads vie for the impression

Expressed in their forgotten, native language

That they are our brightest constellation.

***

English Version by Constantin ROMAN

(All rights reserved, copyright, 2011)

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Poetry in Translation (LXXXII) – Miriam Waddington (1917-2004) Canadian Poet

June 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on Poetry in Translation (LXXXII) – Miriam Waddington (1917-2004) Canadian Poet · International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, Translations

Miriam Waddington (née Dworkin, 1917 – 2004) was a Canadianpoet, short story writer and translator.
She joined the English department at York University. She retired in 1983.
Waddington was part of a Montreal circle that included F.R. Scott, Irving Layton and Louis Dudek.
Some of her published poems and stories have been translated and published in Russia, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Italy, South America and Romania – the latter `(see above) being translated by Constantin Roman.
An excerpt of her poem figures on the Canadian one-hundred dollar note:
“Do we remember that somewhere above the sky in some child’s dream, perhaps
Jacques Cartier is still sailing, always on his way always about to discover a new Canada?”

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Comrade Jonathan Swift’s “subversive” Gulliver and the “Genius of the Carpathians”

June 3rd, 2011 · Comments Off on Comrade Jonathan Swift’s “subversive” Gulliver and the “Genius of the Carpathians” · Books, International Media, PEOPLE, quotations

“Publishing Swift’s satires in 1985, I myself fought a lot with the censor in order to include “A Modest proposal” concerning eating Irish children, which had become subversive here on account of meat shortage in Romania. Faced with the alternative of not publishing the book at all, or doing it without the famous text, I gave it up. The supreme level of censorship was a department of the (Communist) Party Central Committee.”
source of quotation:
http://www.blouseroumaine.com

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