Tuesday 12 August 2008

a matter of principle




Ce nenorocire să ştiu
Că nu exi
şti decât în mine,
Să nu te simt în nici un fel
Și totu
şi să nu mă îndoiesc
Că e
şti acolo!
Dar dacă, totu
şi, m-ai părăsit
Și eu îngrijesc cu supunere
Și ridicol devotament
Frumosii pereti ai statuii
Goale pe dinlăuntru -
Fără nici o fisură
Prin care să se poată zări ceva -
Întrebând încet, cu spaimă, din când in când,
'Ești acolo?',
De
şi ştiu că tu nu răspunzi
Din principiu...


Ana Blandiana



What a distress to know
That you only exist inside me,
To be unable to feel you
And yet to have no doubt
That you are there!
But what if you, nevertheless, have left me
And, compliantly, and with ridiculous devotion,
I keep looking after
The beautiful walls
Of a hollow statue -
Without a crack
To see through -
Asking quietly, fearfully, from time to time,
'Are you there?',
Although I know you don't answer
On principle...

trans. by alina

9 comments:

  1. thank you... yes, I think that too...

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  2. as ever you seem to have knack of taking pages out of our own seret diarises as reading hem aloud to us. and the rate of your work is amazig also. it is impossible to keep up! i guess it is true that the fires of genius burns hungrily... just looked through the posts since i've last visited and was beyond impressed b each series - wish i had the time to comment individually on each of them - )there's so much i could say..)and like many others wonder how you always seem to find the right combinations of text and pictures to which seems to speak to us at an almost uncomfortably personal level!
    hope you enjoyed the mountains... never been to east europe but aching to visit now after seeing your prictures of the danube plains. cant wait for the series on te carpathians (i wonder what the acompanying story would be - to those of us raised on a healthy dose of pop culture cliches them ranges have always been associated with a certain iconic figure of gothic literature...)
    Have you considered publishing? you have a real talent for telling stories throgh the medium of pictures and texts. What DO you o, anyway?

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  3. my goodness: beautiful, haunting, moody, edgy, and lovely on top of all that.

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  4. zuma :-)
    you are back!!!
    I am so happy - for that and for your saying me all these very nice things :-)
    now I am really sleepy and can't think of any decent answer... so just happy that you wrote :-)

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  5. oh katrina, thank you, thank you... it means so much to me...

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  6. beautiful photo. and fascinating, a tension between abstractness & very tactile presence.
    (something sculptural even about that photo)

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  7. yes, ffflaneur, I thought so myself... that sculptural thing especially. you always see the essential.

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  8. sti ca o iubesc...
    o vreau pe perete.

    dor de tine!

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