MIRON COSTIN AND THE
FIRST ASTRONOMICAL VERSE
IN ROMANIAN POETRY
- an article by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
first published on July/August 2000
in Star*Line
(Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association),
U.S.A -
Excepting the Romanian old folk verse,
I would say that the first astronomical verses
in Romania poetry
were composed and published in 1673
by Miron Costin,
as a part of his long poem “The World’s Life”.
Miron Costin was an important
Romanian history chronicler, chancellor and poet,
and lived between 1630 and 1691.
“The World’s Life” is a poem
about time’s irreversibility,
and has rhythm and rhyme
in its Romanian original version.
Here is its astronomical fragment
in my approximate translation:
The sky, powerful God’s fact,
Wonderful creation, has an end.
And you too, golden lights, Sun and Moon,
You will darken worlds, you will lose your coronets,
You, working stars, the sky’s ornaments,
Are waited for last trumpets and tragic drums...