THE LONGEST JOURNEY
for my father

 Now you’re preparing for that longest of journeys,
deciding how best to take your leave;
choosing the clothes that you’ll wear on departure,
your spirit clinging to the air you still breathe.

For you, death seems almost a sporting thing,
though desire wanes with your body’s decline.
Holding on to the light that’s fast retreating,
you rescue last thoughts from a drowning mind.

Having kept a tight vigil, your path’s become clear,
though dreams fade away into wandering.
A longing for life only briefly returns
as you ready yourself for eternity,

but wisdom, holding itself in reserve,
courageously helps you subdue your cries.
You seem to extend your hand to the darkness,
a sweet resignation lighting your eyes.

You’re preparing now for that longest of journeys.
Its vision draws you away too soon.
Sadly we see, as you’re dressing to leave,
your eyes have the look of one already gone.

from Deepening the Mystery by Cristiana Maria Purdescu,
translated by Leah Fritz from the literal translation of Alina-Olimpia Miron

I first became aware of Sorescu when exploring poets from former Iron Curtain Countries, especially Miroslav Holub, who I’d say Sorescu resembles in some respects. They share economy of language (Sorescu once said “Poetry must be concise, almost algebraic“), and a deadpan sense of humour. Both resort to fable, with oblique references to political matters satirizing the Communist regimes they lived under. Where Sorescu differs is in his poetic persona: Holub is the objective scientist: Sorescu is a clown. Like Charlie Chaplin, a bemused everyman confronting the monsters of life. Like his compatriot, the playwright Eugene Ionescu, he is an Absurdist. Here is a poem in which Sorescu uses this sense of existential absurdity:

PERPETUUM MOBILE

Between our ideals and their fulfilment
There’s always a bigger drop
Than on the highest waterfall.

But we can use it rationally
By building a hydro-electric station there.
Even if its energy
Can only light our cigarettes,
It’s quite something.
Because while smoking, we can dream up
Even greater ideals.                     
(version by Graham Mummery)

I love the absurdity of building a hydro-electric station on our ideals. It makes the poem a “cod inspirational” verse. The way he manages both to affirm human spirit in the face of absurdity, while ridiculing it is amazing. Plus it also mocks pomposity of propaganda, taking a sly swipe at the Ceauscescu regime, and rhetoric that exhorts people to greater efforts, which is hidden in Sorescu’s self deprecation and mockery.

He uses the self-deprecation to good effect in this next poem. Here, I believe he is mocking officials who claim to be benevolent, yet whose generosity is humbug. His audiences would have recognized this.

 Late

It’s getting late
in my soul’s garden.
Look at the growing dark
in my right hand palm
in the acacia in front of my house.

Suddenly
I have to
get rid of everything
that is lit up,
my bedroom slippers:
my wardrobe, pictures on the wall…
As for the rest of my effects
that I piled up
to the stars
I can’t take them with me
so I’ll leave them shining on.

In my will I have requested
in my honour
as my memorial
at least on solemn remembrance days
that the whole universe
be distributed amongst the poor.     
(version by Graham Mummery)

Marin Sorescu was born in southern Romania on February 29, 1936. When he was three, his father died. In 1955 Sorescu entered the University of Iasi, and received his B.A. in philology in 1960. After moving to Bucharest, Sorescu married Virginia Seitan. In 1963 he became the editor of the literary journal Luceafarul, where he published his first poems, a book of poetic parodies.
Between 1966 and 1972 Sorescu served as editor-in-chief in a film studio. In 1971-72 Sorescu participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Over the years he took part in a large number of other poetry events world wide including Poetry International, which has contributed to his being widely translated. There is a delicious absurdity about how the first book of poems came to be published in the UK from German translations of Sorescu’s poems.
In Romania Sorescu enjoyed huge popularity. His readings apparently filled football stadiums which probably helped prevent his being arrested, though he did have a period of being under house arrest in the 1970’s because he knew people in a “meditation class” which the Communists took as being a vehicle for spreading subversive thoughts — an absurdity characteristic of his poetry. An absurdity compounded when under the House arrest as he and his wife were allowed out to slip out of their house to do the shopping!
After the Ceauscescu regime fell Marin Sorescu was asked to become Minister for Culture. Another absurdity, just like in the poems. Though unsuited to the role, he served in this position 1993-5. Holding this position caused him to attract a great deal of criticism, not least from fellow poets. Whether he resigned from these criticisms or ill health I don’t know. In 1996 he was diagnosed with liver cancer. In his last month he wrote a long sequence of wry quizzical poems in which he faces and pain. His comic persona remains even into death. The book is dedicated “To those who suffer.” There is a sense of inevitability in it as he confronts it. But it contains some astonishing poems, in which he still affirms life and creativity. Here are two:

A Ladder to the Sky

A spider’s thread
Hangs from the ceiling
Directly over my bed.

Every day I keep track
How much closer it descends
“Look” I say to myself,
“I’m being sent a ladder to the sky
Lowered from above.”

 I’ve grown dreadfully thin,
A mere ghost of what I used to be,
Yet I think my body
Is too heavy still
For this delicate ladder.

 Soul, you go ahead.
Shhh! Shhh!
(version by Graham Mummery)

And another dated the day before Marin Sorescu died:

I’ve turned my subconscious towards the plus.

I’ve turned my subconscious towards the plus.
It had faced the minus
enclosed in a circle
Exactly at the core of the earth.

Daily it irradiated me
With pulses of grief.
“Stop this nonsense all at once” I told it.
I’m a solar man,
I need emanations from above.
I felt good in the air,
In the joy
Of a fulfilled life.

 There’s an attraction for Thanatos too,”
A fascination replies.
“Always farther and farther thresholds to cross.
Leave things for later.
Come out into the light,
We’ll do fine old fellow.”

Note: Unless otherwise acknowledged, the poems come from Marin Sorescu The Bridge (translated by Adam J Sorkin and Lidia Vianu) published by Bloodaxe. It won the 2005 Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation.