SPARKLES FROM
THE SUN OF ROMANIAN LITERATURE

-text and photos
Andrei Dorian Gheorghe;
photos and collages on Mihai Eminescu’s original verses
Valentin Grigore;
design
Florin Alexandru Stancu-

For a real Romanian soul
The highest vibration
Is to read verses by Mihai Eminescu,
The star of his nation.

I began this project with a photo which I had made in 15 June 2015
in the Cismigiu Park, Bucharest,
including the statue of Mihai Eminescu
and, very small on the left among the tree branches,
the planet Venus.

The Romanian national poet is usually celebrated two times a year:
January 15 (the day when he was born in 1850)
and June 15 (the day when he started to eternity in 1889).

Since his masterpiece was the poem “Luceafarul” (1883),
he is nicknamed “Luceafarul of Romanian Poetry” just because,
in old Romanian traditions, Luceafarul
(a word phonetically deriving from Lucifer,
which can be sometimes translated from Latin as “bringer of light”)
means the brightest star.

And the brightest object with a stellar aspect in the sky
is quite the planet Venus.

Mihai Eminescu’s Luceafarul has 96 stanzas,
presents a supernatural love story,
has an impressive astronomical and astromythological content,
and was included in the Book of Records
as the longest love poem in the world.

But Eminescu wrote many other poems,
and many times his opera is associated with the brightness
of all heavenly bodies.

In January 2016 the president of SARM, Valentin Grigore,
organized a commemoration in Targoviste, for which
he combined some of his astrophotos with a few stanzas by Eminescu.

For the English version of these stanzas
I chose the translations of
Corneliu M. Popescu (1958-1977,
his best translator, who died during a terrible earthquake,
and whose memory we also try to honor here,
40 years after the end of his earthly life):

“And secretly, with never fail,
She watched his double race,
Where vessels drew their pathless trail
Across the ocean's face.”

(Eminescu, from Luceafarul/ Lucifer)

“Come down, good Lucifer and kind,
O lord of my aspire,
And flood my chamber and my mind
With your sweetest fire!"

(Eminescu, from Luceafarul/ Lucifer)

“Sparkling haze, across the heavens
Rising slow the silver moon,
She has gathered from the water
And upon the pastures strewn.”

………………………………..

“O'er the lake the clouds in passing,
Cast a soft transparent shade,
Which the ripples rolling boulders
With their radiance invade.”

(Eminescu, from Craiasa din Povesti/ Legendary Queen)

“Moon, fair ruler of the sea, over the sky’s round vault you glide,
The sight of you recalls the grief's that locked within man’s bosom bide;
Beneath thy virgin glow are there a thousand deserts glittering,
And thousand forest shades conceal the wells from which their waters spring!
Over how many million waves extends thy timeless empery
When on your way you sail above the lonely wonder of the sea!
How many flowers besprinkled fields, how many a walled and peopled place
Have known your proud despotic charm when they but looked upon your face!
Into how many thousand rooms you peered as now in mine you peer,
How many thousands brows has lit the flooded glory of thy sphere!”

(Eminescu, from Scrisoarea I/ Satire I)

In 27 March 2016 I thought to try another kind of commemoration,
a meditative walk in a few segments,
and I caught the Sun near the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest,
an institution founded in the 1950s
by the most active researcher of Mihai Eminescu’s opera,
Dumitru Panaitescu Perpessicius,
and placed in a palace made around the 1840s by the aristocrat Scarlat Kretulescu,

Then I went east on the Dacia Boulevard until I saw two streets
appearing like two branches of the same trunk:
the continuation of the boulevard on the right
and the Mihai Eminescu Street on the left.

Knowing that the two streets meet each other again after a few kilometers,
and thinking that Eminescu is the most beloved man
born on the territory of the antique Kingdom of Dacia (current Romania),
I decided in 2 April 2016 to continue my meditative walk
going on the boulevard
and returning to the same place, on other day,
on the street named after the Poet.

And the Dacia Boulevard is one of the most elegant Bucharestian routes
(with many buildings made in the Neo-Romanian style),
which was not altered by the transformations
imposed by the former communist regime (1948-1989).

In the place where the two streets meet each other again,
before returning on the Eminescu Street,
I liked to see a sunset on the Dacia Boulevard.

Then I remembered another personal commemoration of Mihai Eminescu,
in 15 June 2013,
when I caught a sunrise series from the centre of the city.

In 22 June 2016
the Full Moon called me to continue my meditative walk,
this time right on the Eminescu Street,
and I did it in 26 June,
among many other other interesting buildings from the past,
and besides the New Marketers Church (made around the 1770s,
and including an external painting with
the Divine Eye radiating beams of light).

For symmetry,
I added a picture (which I had taken from the speed of a bus in 21 May 2016)
with a sunrise on the Eminescu Street.

And in the end of my meditative walk,
a photo-metaphor (taken also from the speed of a bus
in 3 March 2016, from the Roman Square),
in which the Morning Sun seems like born from
the fusion of the Dacia-Eminescu streets,
just because Mihai Eminescu is not only
Luceafarul of Romanian Poetry,
but even
Sun of Romanian Literature.

EPILOGUE

In the meantime, Valentin Grigore and SARM,
in coopertation with the Dambovita Library and the Literata Association,
organized another commemoration of Eminescu,
for which he chose other stanzas of the Poet.

This time I’ll not use translations for them,
but I’ll give you a suggestion:

to feel and understand the real dimension of these stanzas,
learn Romanian,
the language blessed by the Creator
with the original poems of Mihai Eminescu.

TO MIHAI EMINESCU’S ETERNITY 127
(a 15 June 2016 commemoration in Targoviste)
-photos and collages on Mihai Eminescu’s original stanzas
Valentin Grigore;
verses
Andrei Dorian Gheorghe-

Eminescu taught us
In his poetry
How we can keep up the light
During any hard tragedy.

Eminescu showed us
In his poetry
How we can find the stars in
Spite of any dark energy.

SPARKLES FROM THE SUN OF ROMANIAN LITERATURE

SPARKLES FROM
THE SUN OF ROMANIAN LITERATURE