THE EPIGONES
When I
see the golden era of Romanian writ, it seems
That I
plunge into an ocean of delicious cloudless dreams;
That on
all sides I am girdled by sweet-scented vernal flowers;
I see
nights that stretch above me endless starry citadels,
Days with
three suns in their foreheads, verdant groves with philomels,
Wells of
subtle meditation and of songs no end of showers.
Those
were bards who used a language tuneful as a purling brook:
Cichindeal, the
golden-mouthed, Mumulean, the sorrows' book,
Prale, the erratic nature, the sad,
dwarfish Daniil,
Vacarescu, singing sweetly
of the love of lads and lasses,
Cantemir, who for his
projects drew on piles of knives and glasses,
Beldiman,
composing verses that predicted war and ill.
Next, the
golden harp, Sihleanu; Donici, wisdom's proper nest,
Who, as
only seldom happens, summons to the thinking test
Either
the long ears of asses or the antlers of a stag:
Where is
now the ox so clever, where the fox, the diplomat?
All are
gone and gone forever on the one-way magic mat;
Gone is Pann,
Pepelea's godson, smart as a proverbial tag.
Eliad built up from fancy and from
century-old fictions
Deltas of
the Gospel holies, of the bitterest predictions,
Truth
imbued with ancient legend and the Sphinx, right in the middle!
Ghastly,
thunder-stricken mountain, she stands there, the stony-browed,
Watching
burnt-up rocks surrounded by the fallacies' thick cloud
And
proclaims herself, as ever, the inexplicable riddle.
Bolliac sang of the bondsman, of his heavy
brazen chains;
Carlova to our black banners called up men
from hills and plains,
Conjuring
majestic shadows from the centuries' career;
And like Byron,
ever smitten by the wildest storms of sorrow,
Did Alexandrescu
stifle Hope's torch kindled for the morrow,
Puzzling
out eternization from the ruins of a year.
On a bed
as white as cerecloth, lo, there lies the dying swan,
Lies the
pale maid with long lashes, her sweet voice for ever gone;
Her short
life had been sheer springtime and her death a general grieving,
And her
worshipping young poet watched her with a world of sighs,
From his
lyre flowed mournful verses, bitter teardrops from his eyes
That is
how Bolintineanu started his poetic weaving.
Muresan shakes off the fetters with his
voice like husky thunder,
While his
hand, benumbed and weary, breaks the brazen chords asunder;
He calls
forth the stones, revives them like the mythic lord of rhyme,
Hoards
the mountain's woes, to fir-trees tells their future avatars
And, most
rich in his dire poorness fades away like heavenly stars,
Priest of
our great ressurection, prophet of the signs of time!
And Negruzzi
wipes the cobwebs off the chronicles of old,
For their
dusty, musty pages all Romanian reigns enfold
In the
oldest of handwritings done by learned seculars;
He dips
deep his quill in colours of the centuries long dead
And
depicts anew the paintings surfeited with dark and dread
Which
disclosed the gruesome doings of relentless hospodars.
And that
prince of rhythmic numbers, ever happy, ever young
Piping
lays, singing the "doina" with a leaflet on his tongue,
Spinning
tales from hoary ages, the jocose Alecsandri,
Who upon
a golden starbeam strings a thousand drops of pearl
And,
effulgent marvel, crosses centuries of human whirl,
By turns
laughing, by turns weeping, when he sings about Dridri.
Or, when
lost in raptures, dreaming of a silver-pinioned vision,
With her
eyes like mystic legends, so profound, so paradisian,
With her
bashful, maiden smiling, with her low and gentle voice,
On her
brow he puts a starry diadem of dazzling sheen,
On a
golden seat enthrones her of rebellious worlds the queen
And, by
love for her o'erpowered, starts to write "the poet's choice".
Or when
dreaming, with the doina of the sturdy mountain swain,
The great
dream of rugged boulders, of deep waters in the plain,
Of the
ancient forest resting on the shoulders of a hill,
He
awakens in our bosom longings of the homeland's past,
Calling
up historic icons, wonders ne'er to be surpassed,
The old days of our great Stephen, of his
princely iron will!
..
And we,
epigones, their offspring? Chilly feelings, broken harps,
Too big-headed, too small-minded, impotent
and wornout hearts,
Each a
grinning mask adjusted aptly on a scurvy mind,
All Our
Holy is a phantom and our homeland merely bluster,
With us
everything is varnish, everything but surface lustre.
You
believed in your own writings, we to all belief are blind.
Holy was
and eer so graceful what you wrote and what you said,
All was
thought over by reason, nought but in the heart was bred,
Souls
still generous and youthful even though you now are hoary,
Lifted is
the world's construction! - with you future passes by,
We reiterate real past time, heartless,
cheerless, cold and dry;
We are
empty, all is alien, all but a deceitful story!
All-absorbed
in hallowed thinking, you communed with lofty notions;
We patch
up the sky with planets and besmirch with waves the oceans,
For our sky is dull and frozen and our sea's
a sea of snow;
You
breathed in with anxious fervour the imperial meditations
When you
soared with holy pinions mid the twinkling constellations;
On the
stars' refulgent traces never did you fail to go.
Wisdom,
evermore pale-visaged, with her golden votive light,
With her
royal smile which, star-like, did not wane throughout the night,
Lit your
rose-strewn path of being and a blessing was to all.
To define
your soul - an angel; to define your heart - a lyre,
Which,
enlivened by warm breezes, rang with songs of love or ire;
In your
eyes the world competed with a richly iconed hall.
We? Cold
dreamless eyes, inspectors of concrete things and connexions,
Misinterpreting
all pictures, simulating all affections,
At this
world we look with coldness and we call you visionaries,
Everything
is mere convention; what's good now, tomorrow's bad.
You have
striven for chimeras, fought for aims considered mad
'And
awakened golden fancies in a world of woes and worries.
Both and life succeed each other as
the night succeeds the day -,
Kings can have no other meaning,
purpose, destiny, or way;
Human beings make an
icon and a symbol out of all,
They call sacred, good and gracious
what is simply worthless lumber,
Range and classify their thinking
into systems without number,
And upon the bare dead body put a
many-coloured pall.
That is sacred meditation? A
majestic honey-comb
Rife with non-existing matter; an
entangled wretched tome,
Blade still darker by researchers
who will guide those gone astray.
That is verse? A pallid angel with
looks chaste, never I dissembling,
A voluptuous play with icons and
with voices weak and trembling,
A large robe of gold and purple on
the heavy-weighing clay.
Farewell, visionary natures, saints
that yearned after the sky,
Setting ocean-waves to music,
making luminaries fly,
And creating a new planet from this
world of mud and grime;
We reduce all to the ashes
now within ourselves, tomorrow
In the rubble; dolts or adepts,
old, young, sound, soul, light, or sorrow,
All is dust... The world is brainless and it is the
world we mime.
Translated by Leon Levitchi
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