COSMIC SYMBOLS IN BUCHAREST - 1

COSMIC ROMANIA 11

-text and photos by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
design by Florin Stancu-


One morning I woke up earlier
to see the Moon and Venus,
but the contact with reality was still confused.



Only a few minutes later
I could have a correct vision.



And I thought of the verses written by
Veronica Micle (1850-1889) -
the sweetheart of the Romanian national poet
Mihai Eminescu (also 1850-1889) -
who exactly described what I had to see again:
the natural replacement of Venus with the Sun:

“The morning star in the skies
Is charming when it shines,
But it sets and disappears
When the proud sun rises.

The sun with his lofty disk
Daily awakes you to the light
And quickly makes you forget
The bright star of the ending night.”

(Veronica Micle)







Then I remembered some of the cosmic symbols
I had seen in the last time on Bucharestian old buildings:

































































































































































































The sun continued to climb the sky,
making me think of a few verses by even Mihai Eminescu:

“… the river of blue sky
serves as the way
for the proud and high genius
of the light.”

(Mihai Eminescu)







And I began to think of the cosmic symbols
I had recently seen on newer Bucharestian buildings:





























I also remembered that now some firms
use the Cosmos for trade:











Only if they would not pretend that
the Sun rises from their “galaxies”!



I remembered the sun and the rainbow
in graffiti art:





I remembered even a graffiti poem
as a prolongation of a graffiti sun…

“On the antenna fibre
between blocks of flats
I’ve put the shirt. I’m waiting for you.”







However,
I still preferred the real sun…

















I also remembered the small “starry” square
with names of great Romanian actors:







Among them an actor, Ion Caramitru,
who had impressed me a few years ago
reciting two extraordinary Romanian long poems:
Luceafarul (or Evening Star, or Hyperion, or Lucifer),
the masterpiece of Romanian literature, by Mihai Eminescu,
and Elegy X by Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983),
from which I reproduce below a sublime “cosmic” excerpt
indirectly dedicated to “master” Eminescu…

“Here I am, ill with an imaginary wound
between the Polar Star
and the star Canopus and the star Arcturus
and Cassiopeia from the evening sky.
I’m dying because of a wound
which does not find room
in my body apt for wounds
spent in words, and paying beams
to borders.
Here I am, moaning over stones,
instruments are crumbled, oh the master
is crazy because he suffers
from the entire universe.
It hurts that the apple is apple,
I am ill with pips and stones,
with four wheels, with the petty rain
of meteorites…”

(Nichita Stanescu)



In the meantime the fog appeared
asking for its right to be considered
a celestial element, too.



*

Note:
The English translation of the verses
was made by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
© 2012 SARM
(Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy)