Marin Sorescu

Biography

In 1969 “Iona” was played to a full house in Bucharest, and then the production was quickly withdrawn from the repertoire: its content was considered too controversial. The play had been published in 1968. Sorescu took the biblical story and imagined what happens to Jonah inside the whale. The most terrible moment, according to his foreword, is where the hero loses his echo: he shouts “Io-na” and hears back only “Io”.

He grew up in the village of Bulzești in Dolj County, in a farming family. He finished primary school in his home village, then studied at the Frații Buzești High School in Craiova, and after that at the military school in Predeal. From 1955 to 1960 he studied in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Iași and graduated with a degree in modern languages.

His first book, the collection of parodies “Alone Among Poets”, appeared in 1964, when he was 28. He spoke of those parodies as “sarcastic and awkward”. Poetry followed: “Poems” (1965), “The Death of the Clock” (1966), “The Youth of Don Quixote” (1968), “Clouds” (1975). From 1973 to 1998 the multi-volume cycle “At the Lilac Trees” (“La Lilieci”) was published, a poetic world built around a cemetery of that name. He also wrote a number of books for children. His popularity grew so much that his readings, by report, were held in football stadiums. In 1971 he was a resident of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

About his own verse he liked to speak ironically: he cannot give up writing because he has no talent, just as he cannot give up smoking because he does not smoke. The spoken word, he said, is a frontier one crosses: in saying one thing, you fail to say many others. It seems to me that this remark is a key to his poetry: he keeps playing with the impossibility of saying everything.

In drama the central place belongs to the trilogy “The Thirst of the Salt Mountain”: “Iona”, “The Sacristan” and “The Matrix” (in Russian translation the play appeared as “Lono”, 1977). “The Sacristan” is about an artist consumed by his own flame, who leaves behind only “words on the walls”. There are also plays on historical subjects (“The Third Stake”, “A Cold”) and the comedy “Cousin Shakespeare”, whose main weapon is biting irony borrowed from his lyric poetry. He also published a book of literary chronicles, “Easy with the Piano on the Stairs”, and novels, among them “Three Front Teeth” (1978).

Sorescu was also a translator: in 1969 his translations of the lyric poetry of Boris Pasternak appeared, and later he translated other authors, among them Vasko Popa. He took painting seriously too and took part in many exhibitions in Romania and abroad.

Part of his poetry could not appear under the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The collection “Poems Chosen by Censorship” came out in 1991; the best known poem in it is “House Under Surveillance”. After the 1989 Revolution, when his last books were delayed, he said: we have won our freedom, so one must not complain, but “O censors, where are you now?”

He received prizes of the Romanian Academy (1968 and 1977; separately for drama in 1970), the Italian “Napoli ospite” (1970), “Le Muse” in Florence (1978), the Fernando Riello prize in Madrid (1983) and the Herder Prize (1991). The Romanian Writers’ Union honoured him six times. In 1992 he was elected to the Romanian Academy. From 25 November 1993 to 5 May 1995 he was Minister of Culture in the cabinet of Nicolae Văcăroiu, without belonging to a party. In 1992 he defended a doctoral dissertation in philology at the University of Bucharest.

Sorescu died in Bucharest on 8 December 1996. His last poems, written in hospital, were published in 1997 under the title “The Bridge”. Fifteen books remained in manuscript after him: poetry, essays, a diary and a novel. A prize, the National Theatre in Craiova and a Bucharest arts high school are named after him.