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Correspondent Report from Romania
The
Capital of Europe
by Cristian Mocanu
What is
the capital of Europe? OK, we all know the CAPITALS of Europe,
or some of them: Paris and London, Rome and Athens, Warsaw or
Moscow. Some of you may even know the capital of this country is
Bucharest. But the Capital of Europe par excellence? That's a
more intricate question!
Even those equating "Europe" with "the European Union" (not the
right approach, IMHO) don't have it any easier. Is it Brussels,
where the Commission (The E.U. Government) resides? Or
Strasbourg, in eastern France where the E.U. Parliament and
Court of Justice are located?
Culture sociology would incline towards Athens or Rome where the
principles of democracy and law which now govern Europe were
first devised. Rome is also claimed as Capital (and capital) by
those advocating in favour of Europe's "Christian roots" a
concept which did not make it in the first draft of the European
constitution, but may still make it to the second one.
Invoking Rome, however, would trigger some animosity. People in
Istanbul would say "We are Constantinople, the second Rome'.
Moscow would retort, "We are the Third and ultimate Rome".
Rather than get involved in such thorny disputes, more subtle
minds would look at smaller variations of the European universe:
Paris is the capital of lady's fashion. London, that of men's
fashion. Parma in Italy is the capital of bacon and Krefeld, in
Germany, that of silk. And so on.
But the capital of CULTURE? Which includes arts and our beloved
poetry? Well!
A solution has been found for that, albeit merely at the scale
of the European Union (which, like I said, does not grasp the
whole picture).
Each year, the European Commission assigns this title to a
certain city (including each time the immediately surrounding
area). Bidding can be fierce. But, if successful, it means that
all of cultural Europe will converge to your city for that year:
established names and somewhat shy hopefuls, traditionalists and
weirdos: poets, actors, painters, philosophers, musicians,
dancers! Since the "Elysium" of the spirit does not acknowledge
corporal death, it can mean that even Rembrandt and Beethoven,
Shakespeare and Petrarca will come to visit you
AND dress in style for the occasion!
And now picture the emotion of this poet, a thorough European in
heart and mind, but deemed "a non-E.U. citizen" for all his
previous existence, having to tremble each time he passed the
boundaries of Fortress Europe (are my papers OK? Will they put
an 'interdiction'stamp on my passport so I won't see any of my
friends again? ) upon hearing that not only was the nightmare
over, but a place about 100 miles from his home will be Cultural
Capital of Europe for this spin of the Earth round the Sun which
we call the year 2007.
So now I present to you the 2007 Cultural Capital of Europe:
SIBIU. I am no tourist guide, just a translator and a novice in
the convent of Poetry, so all you should expect is a subjective
presentation.
My first memories of Sibiu are both blurred and horrible. As a
2-year-old I was sent there to a hospital purported to
rehabilitate kids with my disability. The country experienced
terrible floods and Communists decided to send orphaned
teenagers from the east of the country to precisely that
hospital until such time as suitable arrangements were found for
them. Food and drink became scarce. Dehydrated and scared out of
my senses, I was saved by a medical student who managed to
somehow get in touch with my family who then smuggled me back
home.
On the record: I apologize to a wonderful city that for all of
my childhood I associated it with a horrid place created not by
the humanistic tradition of Sibiu but by the cruelty of a system
inflicted upon all of us against our will.
I made my peace with Sibiu more than 2 decades later: a time of
regained freedom, of hopes and maybe of first disappointments.
The occasion for it was a poetry festival called "Europe and the
Americas". And instrumental in the whole thing was Daniela (one
of the Outlaws) who couldn't go (she was
already an established name) and sent me instead. I took with
me some poems I had written about Europe. About the Americas.
About anything. But about that, a bit later!
We had time to visit. Yes, Sibiu is a wonderful city. One of the
7 cities founded in Transylvania by the Saxons (not those of
Edward the Confessor or Ivanhoe but knights and merchants from
the northern half of today's Germany) in the 13th century—it
still has a mediaeval flavour to it. A lot still remains from
the times of the city's founder, a fearless knight by the name
of Hermann of Brunswick (from Lower Saxony). A good strategist,
he realized that the mild, idyllic hills of Central Transylvania
did not provide sufficient natural defense against a Tartar
invasion. The thick walls and majestic towers he ordered to be
built, still stand today. The Saxons were pragmatic merchants.
They forced the Hungarian kings who brought them here to grant
them an autonomous jurisdiction. While the Romanians (many of
them shepherds in this part of the country) were not allowed to
settle in Hungarian towns, the ius saxonicum allowed everybody
to settle in the 7 cities. Which accounts for Sibiu's distinctly
multicultural character up to this day. Nowadays, Germans only
make up less than 10% of the city's population. Still the
political party of the German ethnic population holds the
position of mayor and the majority in the City Council, having
won up to 60% of the Romanian vote. Also, it should be said that
Reformation came peacefully and without bloodshed to these
lands. The Saxons became Lutherans but retained their pragmatic
stance on everything. Persecuting other religions was bad for
business! So everyone could stay and all religions coexist.
I refrain from telling you the whole history of the city, but I
cannot skip Baron Samuel von Bruckenthal. When Eugene of Savoy
drew the last Turks out of Transylvania in the 17-th century,
only the Saxon forts were intact. Transylvania had to be
governed from one of them. Empress May Therese of Austria
appointed this intrepid Lutheran nobleman, astonishingly loyal
to the Catholic Habsburgs, as Governor. He came to Sibiu, but
did not part with his impressive art collection (which he then
increased further). He also founded a college. Both now bear his
name and are landmarks of the city.
Romanians made themselves felt in the intellectual landscape of
the city from the 19-th century onwards. It was one of the few
urban environments in which they could come to the open under
Habsburg and Hungarian rule. So a complex association for the
promotion of Romanian culture called ASTRA, offering everything
from theater performances to scholarships for Vienna) was
established in Sibiu. The name is now carried by the city's
literary monthly.
Ask me who is my favourite Romanian poet and I will hesitate.
Ask me which is my favourite poetry group or movement in
Romanian history and I will say: the Sibiu Circle.
Those neo-Romantics who started their friendship during WW II
were all students of the Romanian University in Cluj. Closed
down by the Hungarian occupants this was transferred to Sibiu in
late 1940. Most of these poets (Åžtefan Augustin DoinaÅŸ,
Ioanichie Olteanu, Radu Stanca, Aurel Rău ) remained in Sibiu
for most of their life. Master sonnetists and, as they sometimes
called themselves, "belated troubadours", they explored other
and other forms each time. Much like the OutlawPoets. Aurel Rău
was the first to introduce haiku to the Romanian readership.
I will keep you posted-in this column- of things which are
taking palce in Sibiu until the end of the year, especially
those having to do with poetry. You can also check out the
official website:
Here is also a
video link.
But now, as promised, an:
APPENDIX:
The 1992 Festival
No, I
positively did not know what to expect. I stopped for prayer in
the Ursuline's Church (a tiny, delicate Catholic church, right
near the railway station, now used by the Byzantine Catholics).
Then I went to a hotel just opposite what used to be
Bruckental's quarters as a Governor. I suspected the Festival
participants might be there. And indeed: they were just having
breakfast. (I hadn't seen them before: but I was one year away
of my languages & literature major, so I had certainly HEARD of
many). There were poets from 55 countries, no less. Among them,
Eugène Van Itterbeek, the Head of the Knokke Bienale at the
time, a huge Belgian contingent (Margaret Harrell, Joris Iven
and others), many Americans (Mark Stand, W.D. Snodgrass, Tess
Gallagher, Adam J.Sorkin), Luis Mizón from Spain, Øyvind
Strand, the Norwegian beat generation poet, a lot of Latin
Americans (Homero Aridjis from Mexico, Heriberto López from
Columbia, Giovanni Quessep from Argentina) and lots, lots of
others. Plus everybody who was anybody in Romanian poetry.
For a moment I panicked and thought I'd better head back. I was
approached by Monsieur Van Itterbeek, however, who told me to
stay. We went to "Dumbrava Sibiului", a forest hosting a
traditional crafts' museum. Shepherds played their flutes for
us. We seemed a bit out of place as we started our poetry
reading in such a beautiful Carpathian setting, talking about
Columbus and vanilla, about Mayas and immigrants!
I read a bunch of poems in English, Spanish, plus a phantasy (a
sonnet with 14 lines in 14 languages) which had, 1 year before,
been awarded a prize by an Italian radio station. Let me say it
immediately: it was just a phantasy, just a rhyming exercise
lacking literary value. But it did warm up the atmosphere and I
became "one of the gang". We ended the day at the local theater
where we saw a play based upon Boccaccio's "Decameron". The
Festival went on for another day but I went home.
Here are a couple of poems I read there:
Iracema*
MOTTO:
"The inhabitants of Latin America do not
celebrate any discovery"
(Jon Sobrino, contemporary Salvadorian theologian)
What do
you think about us, Iracema?
We see you in many ways: as a well-wrought anagram,
As the remainder of a bygone Romantic age
Or of books we have long since shut.
But what about us, Iracema? What about you and us?
You fought us with arrows of war, then with Cupid's.
Seeing that you can't be one of us
You tried-but failed- to plant us into your universe.
At least you tried to come near us, to talk to us.
But now you're silent and your glance is impenetrable
Just at the moment when, by a sad twist of fate,
We became less interested in your honeysweet lips
And came to the paramount question:
What is our reflection in your selva-deep eyes?
*=Reference to the eponymous novel by
José de
Alencar.
Knot
"I won't
let you come in" you told me,
"first give me a proof that you have come a long way."
"I come a long way, a very long way" I answered.
"from as far as Ultima Thule
where the frosty wind from Terra Australis Incognita
blew on me!"
"I won't let you come in" you told me,
"first give me a proof that you have been even farther
away."
"I come a long way, a very long way" I
answered.
"from where Mercator's maps are useless,
from another dimension
which hides from our eyes and from the
non-Euclidian tables".
"I won't let you come in" you told me,
"first give me a proof that you have been even farther
away."
"I come a long way, a very long way" I
answered
"I come from the boundary of my words."
"I won't let you come in" you told me,
"give me a proof that you come from farther
away".
So I stayed outside, hitting my head
against the walls of the cold
Because nobody has ever succeeded
To go beyond the boundary of their ords.
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