Meditation to an invented anthology

by George Anca

3. 07. 83. București

La Delhi pe iarnă moartea mi se uita în gât

ieri în centrul Bucureștiului mi s-a uitat gâtul la moarte

am revăzut-o și eu de nemaivzut o tristețe în picioare

încă nu cădeam m-au dus Nana și Nansi de colo colo

ori în care loc aș fi căzut putea fi cruce

schimbarea climei zice înfocată Mariana

anghina pulcelată pe același fond nu

e nicio problemă și nu se moare așa

dar dacă eu le-am cerut iertare și le-am spus că

le-am iubit și am călătorit împreună și

prin subteran nu puteam altfel traversa

simțind că n-o să mai pot urca de acolo

ieșisem în oraș cu 40 de grade pentru Mahabharata

1. 11. 83. Delhi (D5)

I play chess with Vasile

wolves dream a drink

you play piano alone

2. 11. 83. Delhi

the wives'minds rejuvenated

beyond tragic purification

when forgetting the sins of game

in dream you had arrived at down

with other appearance mounted

on the white ants tree

laughing from lungs halving

the pay of sitar illusion not

knowing the ten adventures

and who singing other music

had pushed us in the sin

of riverside coppices

I quote negations from the gallows

over a woman in the ghost

replacing the nonsense

it rings with an invitation

three days after in Hanuman

Mandir at his daughter shadi

since yesterday no more distant pallor

since today morning contributing

to my sin with the birth

distinguishing the mogul

from Turk I retired

in the nearness of Kublai

I was distinguishing the love from death

Radha loving only in the meaning

that she will lose will lose Krishna

I'll not transcribe the trembling

in the abyss of awakening

to not lose Radha not lose Radha

the alley slips under monkeys

thoughts shadow up to the tower

palm-tree growing me green

guarded by her child

this untouchable woman

is looking into the mirror

the child sees me sees me

and I see both covering with touches

the matter of white mirror

a paisa for Dusshera a paisa for

puja jae mata immaculata

harijan gone in the mirror

now that it came the time

of quiet word jiu-jitsu

how without irmi and judo

in tempo of kempo tae kwan-do

tang soo-do aike-do

karate kung fu

you were painting annunciation

saying lalat netra agun basan

from Rabindranath ashes-eyes

and again ma bole dakis nore mon

n-o chema-n minte pe maica ta

run like the calf after the cow

6. 11. 83. Delhi

non sono sola

jae jagadisha hari

accompanied at piano-forte

say something before

next concerto for credibility

of yaksha's meghaduta

7. 11. 83. Delhi

Confused I am by all snake's symbols – Achilles died in the Island of Snakes, Leuke by name, and the island went some while ago unnoticed to Yama. A letter I red in red ink from madness to madness, then once again I met you within confusion and Monday morning in a kind cosmos.

It's black ink over a page and a half. The empty white half doesn't help. The child hadn't time after falling for the second time. No color. It is written „nu s-a împiedicat”. Free fall. Past. Three weeks plus two weeks and now, similarly postponed.

Said, you understand. Other colors. Walk. The unseen garden. Said, you saw. Left the same. Seen nothing. Second time, at night, laughs over any face and a half. Loved the white cow. Disturbing. Killing kidneys. Economy, phallus and belonging. Jacket, urine, jacket. Commercial name Rivatril, nothing in India, understand Kamla.

„Nine years ago on a November afternoon, two weeks later, I was sitting on the same verandah, on the same chair turning my back half to the sun, with half of my senses turning towards the child on the other verandah.

We were trying to make out the sense of English sentences, hearing the crows, feeling the coming noise of nature. Another subtle voice of birds, same feeling like under painted plantains. The child walking in the dark, green shadows (with lures of brown, yellow and red) of a late afternoon – it should last forever. The child now ten years old is watching intensely Juliette and Hermione who I am not. My brain is touched. We are going to explore it.”

God, take my life, make two for my child, let him old in me and grown up in him, a girl, a boy, unaware of us all. The night you did passed, and a beautiful Indian November also today and all children and you and me.

The dream you gave me not long nights ago wasn't true, wasn't untrue, like you an me, and a few troubles, not more sins. Cursed be you for my enjoyment of being. You push me to those prints of child's fall.

I thank to first mother immolated, burned like a sati, in my very place and of child's. It happens with no why, maharaj, good Bhagavan. There was a story of stories you'll bitterly remember, giving a wind and a rain with no why.

„I should understand. But with anger and longing, I don't. I regret the steps, the same steps I walk down through the same roadside, pebbles and known and unknown stones, faces watching, everything in alert dressing to meet the acquaintances.

I need to hold your hand, feel you for long, long time, so long that I could forget about everything, the noise outside, phalwala shouting, waiting whores and raven crowing the hour of our death, drown around my mouth, eyes, palms of my hands.

On a nice worm Delhi winter evening, I was surrounded by nice, polished young men. Then I could have told you and myself the truth about you, about myself – half open windows, half drunk coffee, abandoned books, type-writer half-filled with dust, my mother opening the empty letter-box, Luiza in a guise of patience at the entrance, Vijay and Terry playing a big game of scrabble.

And the children loving being incarnations of all who have once been and loved India, great possibilities of life and disappointment. I always dreamt about reaching here, walking in the dust in the footsteps of many, going with books in my hand, in a (cold) November morning, smelling the fresh stark and crowning on my saree forever and of course dying here, my ashes thrown into the Yamuna.

And I find you here from the same and alien stock with all the middle-European complexes, frailty, self-destroying depressions, fears from being in the patch, Freudian complexes – we are doomed. It is all fatal, too heavy for me.”

Did you find Rivatril? - I didn't understand description of it. - Bad E.E.G. How are your children? - Loving incarnations like ever. - I eave the place to try again, Margaret, snake is wise indeed, no time to be on one's way.

I like it, after all. - Understanding another description. - Middle... - That's. - For us. - Over -

And now? - Rivatril. - American? - The doctor thinks also British, he was furious when I said German. Why cannot God make myself Rivatril for my child?

I take profit in it (dear she), while, „stately, plump came Buck Mulligan” „at work with syllables to submit language as living” „and delighting proof of” his „gregariousness”, and far from the middle your Dumrul, „not I”, „MOUTH: ... out... into this world...”, well, Billie, L R(omanian), left, right, „M: Mother”, „It all”, „Nothing to be done”, „Yes, let's go”, „about fifty”, our children know November, our children take awards. „You love me so!”, „Birth was the death of him”, I tried to start as SPEAKER, ending „the sad tale a last time told” through „The globe alone, alone gone”, „Prematurely old” „rock her off” as reader, „Little is left to tell”, a little more, „Ah!” (Krapp), „No, I wouldn't want them back”, „On” (Henry), „Not a sound”,„Finished”, „You remain”, „Desert”, „He looks at his hands”, „pick it up”, „what time you went back”, „and gone in no time gone in no time”, „Good-evening” (Female voice), „Repeat”, „When I thought of her it was always night”, „among the deepening shades”, „A penny for a poor old man”, „Eh, Billie?”, „Well” (B), „Well I'll be...!”, „Madam” (HE), „Tomorrow... noon...”, „Ready, miss?”, „Tomorrow, who knows, we may be free”.

At superbazar I was advised to visit, not to see, Chondni Chowk, that is Medical Bureau, opposite Chatne Wale Sweet Shop. I dropped in Young Friends Chemist, knowing that no drugs are being imported in India.

And so in The New Book Depot, I got the following imports: The Book of Dede Korkut, for our rivatril; for mine, by Beckett:„Ends and Odds”, Endgame, Occasional Pieces, Happy Days, Waiting for Godot, Foot falls, Not I. But for my wife's rivatril, Joyce's Ulysses, as you already saw through the beginnings and endings, remaining all alien in the middle in search of the needed rivatril.

Please do say your sincere thoughts and impressions in the last 24 hours since I am searching for RIVATRIL (bad EEG, two falls on the street OF THE CHILD – the theme already arisen. Do not agree again be Kafka's avatar, past are those times.

Yes, how much can he tell. The last 24 hours – one had a long walk with one, bumping up and down on the pavement all the known buildings of the university all different now with one, one's knees still trembling, shoulders, elbows, hands touching just a bit – once on four steps.

Why they don't walk to the end of world? No, let they go to Pondicherry, lie down on the rock, put one's head on one's belly, listen to the sea and one's body working. They appreciate all what they miss in life. Long paths leading to unknown houses. Wild roses on the window frames.

Oh, no that is the end of romantics. Shops, business to be done, this is the travel one has to take up alone. Never should admit when one con-fused, wandering looks here and there, and immediately comes some one.

One is with the child, all the child's life, longer than their sum. Laughing at roses. Little same dukha. Nothing of the middle park, with a French mother carrying her Walachian Christ. Could be a movie at Batta shouses.

Tantric answers from Asian Southern hemisphere. Paise. See a skin cut by dance of hastened desertion of the last darkness before the first half. God listened one's prayer, as for an end of one's life for nothing.

The child came from the tutor. Went to tutoriality. If you'd written more, half of a half more. Their listener from Cismigiu-Musoori plantains didn't bother, you think, for the child's illness. Like many other trees did. And difference between day and night at birth, etc.

The half empty white repeated in your friend's letter as for Rivatril. Canceled visit and journey near Interstate Bus Stand, I love the earth-goddess, feeling her help to the remained incarnations.

Cold night. Joking knee. Morning Hindu-Muslim prayers. And that bottle of perfect form. You are that. I always drink you like for the first time, and you keep not only my thirst. Looked to child nose to nose to parrot. Our children know November, our children are in good health.

„E-n zadar, copile”. Isn't in vain, nu e-n zadar, copile, „copii eram noi amandoi” - „When I was little tiny boy”. Nobody learned about rivatril in India. There's colder than in child's winters here. Could be also the pre-puberty.

No scandal by Amita-Calamita moves me by now. Bibi speaks on Romanian rugby team, to go there. I'll fall in your place. Fist my nose. You, falling woman. The newly married couple was not in that bus – Andhra. Pendant que des parfums de roses viendront embaumer nos vingt ans!

Sconosciuto. Chiar? After all seas begin to boil on the main road. It returned the eggs to be broken in its own memory. Only answer. Proof of dialogue. And orgy. Who is the thief? One started dancing. God, says the whore. Bones as ivory, well, respect the doctor, don't be like that with me.

I need only rivatril. I cannot kill myself. Spring isn't for me any more. Only sweet November. With sins full of graves. Sorry saying doctor is god. Has no idea. The people look through window. Fools. Something more than thieves. Confusion of lost senses.

After, the whore said, for the third time, pray to god. Precising she is a bachelor. Rhythmically: I pray for your child. Saint god is only one. God is love and love is god. The sister of the flower-dealer saw privately the Pope on 20th October, in the fifth Room in Rome's Vatican.

It was a November morning in Delhi. A cold nip, mist around leaves and branches, child's knees shivering in the air. „Hurry, we may be late for the school bus. And don't fall into the wholes dug in the middle of the road”. On child's legs – what's there, snow or smell of wet leave?

Each morning is full of anticipation. I understand it only now. How miserable. I was a wife. How much fuller of happiness one's life is setting out every day for a new adventure. It's no moral, no feminist teaching. I can't sum up my situation as: I am happier than any wife. Perhaps, only luckier: to be able to manage on my own.

To see the children from far away is a relief. To reach bus stop. To feel I fulfilled for this morning my duty as a mother. Prepare to meet the students. My inspiration must work. I have ready in my mind what I thought till now. And still there is a little hope – they may not come today.

As I think just now: what if you come? I turn my face and you are there. But, as you never come, they always come. Some very faithfully. Some just a bit late. A bit not there in thought with their thoughts.

Why did you come to love women in blood? Jerusalem seen by Jeremiah like a whore. And so seen Canterbury by Passolini. Rivatril was the theme. Letter to brain-surgeon. Even you, Falstaff, don't drink, say, because of Mallory.

When I wanted to jump from the top o Jantar Mantar, repeat, I saw the water down there was dirty. I renounced also to don't regret in the air. Dear Falstaff, you think one cannot try everything. I played it all. I do everything. Anything. But...

We have the freedom to do anything. Become painters and paint, spoil colors. Children started crying at gate. Loving Falstaff was not compulsion, but applications. Yet yesterday, an understatement: don't embarrass one's agony.

16. 11. 83. Delhi

Ajung acasă la ora șase. Acum e șapte. Mi-e foame. Am avut o zi grea. De dimineață, am fost la ora de română. Ultima lecție: La teatru. Ce teatru, domnule? Că apoi am mers la serviciu. Am probleme personale.

Vreau să mă însor, dacă sunt masculin. Dacă sunt fată, mă mărit. Îmi trebuie ceva bani și câte și mai câte. Teatru? O scrisoare pierdută? Eu cu cine votez? Curat examen. „Să-le spui curat / Că m-am însurat”. E din Miorița, fără niciun măritat.

Ba da. Că „a lumii mireasă” asta face. Votez cu ea, domnule profesor. Altfel știi că îți vorbesc cu dumneavoastră. Mai știm că nu se poate preciza asta pe englezește, și facem o traducere pe cinste, liberă.

Nu am înțeles floarea albastră chiar atunci, în grădină. Ați spus de două ori Eminescu și încă o dată floare albastră. Nu știu la ce vă gândeați. A, da, ne-ați pus în temă cu structuralismul de la Panini la Saussure. Și alte nume.

De ce nu ne-a mai vizitat și anul ăsta Sergiu Al-George? Mă gândesc să mă gândesc, am de tradus ce mă gândesc. Nu ne mai dați proverbe. Nici latini. Păi da, anul trecut studenții tăi au învățat latina serios, de-au înțeles româna în istorie.

V-ați ocupat cu știința, știm noi. Dar nici cu teatrul nu mi-e rușine. Am început jocul cu vorbe. Am întâlnit substantivele pe drum, la sărbători naționale și în expoziții. Astea sunt propoziții, din câte înțeleg. A mai trecut, totuși, timp. Uitați-vă la ceas – certificat de română, 1984, trei ore. Traduc titlurile lecțiilor din cursul Cazacu.

20. 11. 83. Delhi

The jamadarnis came in a long line. They filled up the path where I wanted to come to you. In rags, the brest of some hanging out from under blouses. Darkness fell and they passed by me giggling and anticipating the pleasures after day work. And you went by with jamadarnis. I saw you making love with them. It stroke me it wasn't literature. It was you with same hands taking their measured but love for 10 rupees.

20 steps more. I reach the steps. Nobody there. But the lock. The light is deceit just your words to me, to put me to a good night's sleep. There is not hesitation. Away from the closed door, from the lock whose key is not in my hand. Away with all rhetoric of sailing ships from island of cannibals. Away to listen to the palpitation of our hearts.

Delhi, Delhi at night, I never loved you so much. Love to stand on street. I never knew one can stand so at night, waiting and watching the cars which turn up and disappears in their own rhythm. I never new Probyn Road so urban. Waiting for the prince, after his battles, on stage and in life. Delhi on night, uncover me not, hold my hand, I have a long way to go.

The time was over, Nothing to do but smoking, running, hallucinating, laughing, regretting, trying, remembering, writing, asking, keeping, opening, drinking, listening, booking, breathing, chattering, provoking, embracing, kissing, worrying, smelling, forgetting.

All already in the great game. No able to reach his mother breast, to say the word I. Closed up in the darkest square of the carpet. Lives based on half truths. Daring not to say a sentence. Exaggerating murderous wishes. I am the child, I played in all my orifices, let me listen to God.

I wouldn't say you are conventional – not exactly conventional, but sometimes – value of official marriage, child having to love his mother best, grimace when speaking about Mircea fucking Stella, if daughter would fuck a black man. Appreciating people who would just devour everybody just because they are a family. Or am I unjust?

Uncle Billie, now, on top of Jantar Mantar. Sorry, son, do not suffer. I do it for you. I did it immediately. Jumped by mistake. Even saint fathers. I wanted simply to play with you. Looking in no mirror. In no eye. Awfully burning sun.

I moved into void under your conventional protection and love. Bad looking uncle after fall. Say your mother why didn't she take care. There is water in front of you, think of fishes. Can swim by my fatty being and no-being.

Kid, I didn't it to can say I did it. Happy your mother when given birth to you. I give you this my death. The birth of my I. As I am not a family and can jump alone. No, in the air, I wish I fly. But I want you to see me among invented fishes.

I don't know swimming. Water almost doesn't exist. Some dirty liquid. I did it for so little water. With fire in it. With you following me by camera, never realizing where I was, where I am, where I will be. You click and turn playing: I pay homage to the Translator.

You know no one of my ten professions: Killing, stealing, adultery, cheating, double-talk, coarse language, talking nonsense, covetousness, anger and perverted views. Young people of misery adventure, connoisseur of real India killed himself, said the story teller.

10. 12. 83. Delhi.

Within modern Indianity and Indian modernity, condition of poetry surpass condition of poet. As today revolt is universal, freedom of poetry is limited. An anthology of underground poetry will be not published anywhere, it can appear as an interference into internal affairs of poetry, an unpublishable manuscript. A sclerotic idea of both poetry and its belonging are making the job at least unpleasant if not impossible.

There is a great country of India, with poetry in different languages, with poets feeling individually as everywhere, greatly concerned with symbols and liberties of general hope. The feast of old aesthetics passed through alankara science. Genuine subjectivity within undivided inspiration of consciousness may preferable destroy before building.

One has indeed to feel loosing from one's hypocrisy. There is a softness in the strong voices, a silent strength in the mystic melodies of delicate singers. An ambition of modern poetry in India appears to be the expression of Kali Yuga survival on one hand, on another, the rediscovery of ancient perfection, like in any renaissance.

Translating Indian poems, one feels getting indianized, using quiet virtual Sanskrit, Bengali, Malayalam, Hindi, actually renouncing to translate. Foreign poems written in India are still Indian. Religious pressing on secular minds, the disregard of sympathy, shock carried by crisis, entropy can be easier accommodated in a translation than in the original. But for what use?

Theories of poetry and poetics are all of a sudden forgotten, a new poem comes into existence. With end or new beginning in translation, under primordial attractive originality. To which extent the metaphor is free of language and the language is a metaphor? Is poetry a morphology?

Is the society co-author with an individual poet against its progress? India of poets and poets of India are in logic connection. Human mankind is shaped in a considerable measure by poetry. Normal decadence doesn't fit political pretensions of advancement.

What is truth on poetry-lie? To translate is to create again a creation, killing original author or killing self. If poets don't read poetry to be not influenced, do readers read it to be influenced? Posthumous reading of a poet is nobody's job?

Nobody likes anthologies. Anyone knows poetry through own itinerary from poet to poet. The few occasion of revelation could have come from poetry, be it a prayer or a curse. Somehow poetics kills poetry as poetry kills poet. The show excites less young imaginations busy with reopening generation's eye, nourishing philosophies and children.

11. 12. 83. Delhi, D5.

Remembering of Romanian poetry while reading an Indian poet, a commercial optimism is as if doubled in divergent mirrors. Gone are the times of bhakti poetry everywhere but not entirely here. Sad and silent are revolutionary voices. Even anti-poetry age speaks metaphorically. Crust of study doesn't cover crest of poetry. One chats easier with Kalidasa.

Poetry as personal experience and translation brings an utter impression mixing lost impressions with received enthusiasms, sorrows and rejection. Linguistics of translations have nothing to do with poetry. Frankly speaking, linguists can work properly only on generative errors with Wittgenstein and Jacobson. Let everybody learn renunciation.

Poets love each other most in occasion of one's death. Those poems written as acknowledgment are worth to be not rewritten in a translation, but slightly reshaped through metaphors and diction according to a different colorfulness.

Poems dedicated to critics will be most commented by fellow-critics. Poems dedicated to poor and heroic require a messianic good-sense in front of Babel ideologies and historical assassinating tragedy. Same about contradictory god, hypocritical tolerance, Lucifer's atheism.

In the beginning, translations were Greek-Latin. For Sanskrit alankarikas, realizations were only samples. Unless religious ones, the bodies of poetry are left. The Logos-Brahma resisted. Golden pages share poverty of translator if not greatness of a Marpa, of a Luther. Somehow, smallest translate greatest and vice-versa. There are more anonymous translators of Shakespeare than better known translators and original authors.

Translation is most censurable work, firs by translator – most refined censorship. Convention is of special omniscient criticism, applicable to any other „introduction”. Destroyers of anthologies are practically endless, translator included.

Readers aren't programmable. They have not only last word, but also first stimulation. Don't wait for writer of other culture – the code will be bot rejected and completed by their share. A translator is a reader of or for readers, a re-writer. After all, reader isn't angel, not easy acceptor of eternity.

Eminescu refined Romanian poetry, also through his reader, to the extent of dangerous universality. Coșbuc made a still more Romanian Sanskrit Anthology. Blaga reopened mono logically the gate. Anti-poetical 20th century contributed to cold literary war. Let next century to give a new chance.

Teaching in hell of paradise, the heavy truthfulness of poetry comes from outside, not from inside of poet. Poet's dream-negation-dream language is to be translated, retold, as an outside work. It is enough for a Romanian to know he exists in Punjabi under Mrs. Pritam signature and in her magazine. While she confessed she was forgotten in Romania.

That can not happen after all. Be seen her poetry as gurdwara did. As happened to Baudelaire from his contemporary judges, and later from Sartre. Who Sartre was himself well fined in similar manner. Largest way of remembrance-forgetfulness is still an anthology.

From Tagore without Tagore, down Ghalib, preference to Walathol, free underground poet, measured university one, traditionally musical Sanskrit modern kavi as saint in speech as political father. Gurudev's Child Christ. Aurobindo Greek-Latin involvements. Bharati's many religions also out of religion's idiom.

If poetry belongs to a higher order, the crisis of it is a good thing. The poetic rights will be not claimed like human rights. Poetry of eating, surviving, thinking, poetry of generations or generations of poetry. Stories in process of translating are different than previous ones. A translator transforms intellectually the feelings. A translator seeing Jamuna thinks of poems on Jamuna.

Poet is most unhappy being. Poetic being isn't human or divine only. Kalidasa's Cloud Messenger became symbol of jails. Vergil's and Horace's propaganda poetry for emperor and empire knows, within greatness of Greek like perfection, the opposite dimension, sometimes in the myth of India.

Rationed translation-poetry doesn't damage poetry. Vastness of another poetry comes to intensity of translation during hard times in one's own country, or of his exile in country of which poetry he tries to translate. Hardly can one speak of a free translator. Pity for unpopularity of translations with writers and literature – readers like them more.

Inhibiting craft of excellence in another language isn't easily connected – almost imaginatively – with original's quality. Sound is and isn't too much. Meaning is and isn't too obvious even for reader of the original. Inspired expression will be out of canons of poetry itself.

When one starts to feel poet, who and how does one remain a poet while translating, and if so, what kind of a relation exists between himself and original authors? I met a Jewish old gentleman preferring to read Solomon Song of Songs in Latin – Cantica Canticorum.

No matter of translator, but of translation, of language. If not a poet, translator talks as an avatar or sacrilege through poetry, on behalf of another creator. On the other hand, more than one complete version, direct from Sanskrit, Rig Veda will not shadow Eminescu's Roamian replies to it. On the contrary, will increase its singularity, as well as mystery of poetical creation, poetical stand against senseless time of history.

If something can be free of provincialism, language considered, poetry comes in mind together with music. Orchestras of translators can color differently, age after age, bibles in version. Religious beauty will separate again and again accordingly sacred and profane, tot use preferred terms in Mircea Eliade's Hermeneutics.

But quiet translatable religion isn't as much tied with quiet untranslatable poetry. Not only poets appeal, sometimes, to god, but also god turns to be a gnostic poet. Time by time, and almost always in translation. Are they not first translations Brahma's words in Sanskrit, Buddha's in Pali, Jehovah's in Hebraic, Christ in Aramaic and Greek, Allah's in Arabian, Zarathustra in Persian?

Unknown writers in their own literature happen to be recognized by translation. „That is not poet at all”, one can learn of a dear representative already translated. „This is not publishable with us” is suggested in other bank. „This cannot publish us in exchange” things almost everybody.

Does ghazal answer some European form? Was Michel Madhusudan sure enough about chances of sonnet in Indian languages? Is fashion of kai-ku a western sign in Indian poetry, or remains a seventeen syllable Sanskrit mandakranta meter? Daring innovators of forms are showing solidarity in decadence too.

Page on which a poet wrote his poem is it white again in translator's imagination? Does it matter if the first wrote with left hand and the second transcribes it with right hand? Are beliefs and morals of translated author stimulating energy and choice of translators? What the reader will say? Is cultural sclerosis blocking the way from poetry to poetry?

The confession beyond translation is of a third author. The voice of silence from which both sound and echo play truest lie, most promising illusion. Objectivity seems to be with founders, currents, involvements in progress revolution, etc. How much a poet translated, translator and reader belong to subjectivity, reducing full mystery of imaginary India to a short black verse? Or, by contrast, encountering revelation.

Poetical myth in modern Indian poetry may be less myth, actual sensibility being recognized in terms of general humanism and specific tradition. Greater poet not lesser Indian, lesser Indian not greater poet. Poetry isn't only creation of poet, but an appointment, a marriage. Ubiquitous feelings are expressed and re-expressed as for first, as for last. Poetry outside poet, poet inside poetry, poetry inside poet.

Poetry is only beautiful death-misery-sin together with love-life-purity. Discussion with a poet, translation of a poem, thinking of its making, according to author's talent inspiration mean appointment, never disappointment.

How translatable are politics, morals, superstitions? Is mystical readership of poetry equal to non-riding it? Is poetry a recital of language in poet's interpretation? Is it remembrance, prophecy, rehearsal of reality through illusory illusion?

Absolute blackness of Kali provides poetry daemon in poet's speech, apparently one with that of reader, listener. Silent secret of poetry is unknown to poet himself in other language than that invented and simultaneously forgotten of his poetry. Poetical inspiration doesn't belong to cosmos, nor cosmos to its projections.

Sever game of objectivity leaves to object only professional rejection if not interested acceptance of its re-inspiration. Through mechanical categories of comparative literature as body of methods, a translator can check themes, guess influences, open ways to affirmative readings. A formulation like „India in Romanian”, i.e. Romanian poems of Indian inspiration, try to accede sphere of poetical awareness.

The proof an anthology could make isn't of an experience of changing principles described in this attempt, but extensive super-cultural mythological India. Poetic civilization doesn't rebuild surroundings, but contemplate and attack the ever existing ones. Practical love reform by Tulsidas or Francisco d'Assisi, series published by Sahitya Academi are seducing the anthologizer. South American analogy crosses interest for African voices.

With Tagore, in Bucharest and on Black Sea bank, we have infinitely more than whitest beard in view. Reasserting poetry sacrifice is a lead to sculptural abstraction re-imagined by Brancusi in Indore. With Eminescu, Blaga, Arghezi, Eliade, other less famous but not less poets, we have some real and imaginary Indian new mantras.

Brotherhood poetry slows self alienation. Poetry of self increases need for brotherhood. Color of tropic can get richer through diminutive mountain-verse, less monumental for eye than Himalaya. Adaptation up to renunciation. Renounced anthology suits still be tribute payed to poetry expectations of worshiper.

Artifice-creation as worship seems revenged. Critical job is by far other job than for an anthology. Critical instrumentation, tired for imposing and destroying, will stop working, at best. Poet's choice will be also crushed by unemployed critics. Better a reader, a teller of those, say, interesting poets of twentieth century.

Who is poet's India, who is India's Poet? Selfishness but freedom before getting it. Freedom of country, freedom of poetry. God has a temple in poetry. Modernity self is to be seen with third eye. Felt with sixth sense. Regretted nostalgia of lost paradises and hells.

Older clarity of systematic perfection makes place to clear disintegration of former patterns. Universal entropy by natural balance its poetry fascination. Poets repeat the former creator playing his last sound. The first and the last young poet aren't unknown to each other. Old modern Indian poet, a father.

You know poetry anthologies published here. If you don't find there a poem known everywhere, please share some to present intended translator. Between poetry sonority and hearing there is a space of imaginary reconstruction of human consciences, a living poetical opportunity.

An imaginary anthology would mix primordial language with modernity, be it in terms of Bremond and Tagore. Let lose intention, take methodological ignorance or irony making Peguy to write a thesis in verse, like Sanskrit treaties. Physician poet Vasile Voiculescu, who applied a versified application to Health Ministry, actually rewrote Kalidasa's Sakuntala in Carpathians.

Histories of literature are spoiled anthologies as anthologies are renounced histories. Unlike poet, the poetry faces victoriously the history. Poets' biographies include personal epitaphs full of not so black humor like philosophies, reconstructions, enthusiasms, dandy poses, revolutionary calls. Let out age, audience, glory, suspicion as negative stimulation.

From Latin neoteric to Indo-Anglian bard we see reversed dispositions for fashion in different times, geographies and cultures. Neoteric liked finer Greek pattern differently from Indo-Anglian face to poetical European English. Indian muse may have adapted to that language which is not any more foreign.

In a general anti-fiction age, non-poetry, essays or poems on poetry are rather fashionable. For publisher, poetry is loss. Poetry of censorship and censorship of poetry thrones on Nobel convenient winners, schizophrenic realism, poetry of recovery in asymmetry to poetry of improvement.

The few changes in poetry during centuries, poet's eternal necessary poverty are encouraging and educating facts for readers and society. Transformations could even be balanced by return to poetical mysterious depth, beauty and soundness beyond exemplary sufferance.

So many members of anthology, or absents mentioned afterward are moving. Is it worth to translate children, thinking to children of next century? Long centuries after, like now in their choices in return to old masters thinking to us not like children.

Children weren't so popular with Sanskrit poet. Not so in aesthetic codes for modern children, grown-ups, old, dead. Poetry life, life poetry. Is middle class kind of middle-poetry class? Solar system, poetic system.

Beautiful conclusion to death, fear of ambiguous ends, Archimede's invading disorder of circles, dear disorders – poetry of disorder, still order? Aestheticians may be happy with broken patterns, reminding, rebuilding, saving. Likewise, administrators could find consolation for small interest to writing from ivory tower.

With much more questions for a single unsure answer – what is to be poetry itself – one can wonder, after a few years, what one's indianization may mean? It's better to clarify it in India with no regard how he will play a fool. Than to be confused in his own play with prohibited corrupter of the right. Worship disposition clears verse directness of negation.

Avoided influences are at work. Open dissidence puts together tradition and literary denial. With a new poet, poetry re-finds its origin which cannot be younger than god. Remaining young, patriarch poet may be rather god's father than his son.

Perfect happy poet, like Milarepa, would be also stoned or poisoned like Socrates, Dante and so many moderns. Unaccepted poet makes his poetry silently accepted – only poetry isn't conspirator, on the contrary is a reply to power brutalities. Poetry power: unchallengeable by other powers. Poet-poetry challenge Sanskrit Ardhaniswara, Plato's androgynous.

Anthology retains poems in an adventurous way of choice. Some poems having to be present are unknown to translator. He may translate masterpieces in the picture, jumping from peak to peak under an illusion of essences. What other image than a summary, beyond preimage if not prejudice?

Answerable anthology connoting Asian spirit can attract a better judgment of own tradition. Birth and rebirth of poetic meaning repeats samskara. Like eggs double, birds songs mix with human love songs. Orpheus knows all other beings than his. Birds aren't consoled by Ramayana inspired by their sorrow.

Poetry as an integrated, sonorous soul of all beings chose the poet and gives him a secret of novelty within permanence. Modern distortions confirm perennial beauty of contraries. God and devil play episodic roles in poetry like in a Mozart opera a king, singing very little if at all.

17. 12. 83. Delhi, D5

True way to love and hate is poetry, through Radha, or, otherwise, through modern verse pushed by politicians. Some answering ghost-compassion to previous meditations in surplus. Poetry-contemplation, poetry-action. Different from earthly muddy conflicts.

Avoidance of poetry – hate for poet. Pretensions of tensions. Rimbaud, isn't enough excellency to be free to see a movie? Hunter of poets, poetry murder keeling a poet-two, many-all. Logic of poetry and killing isn't unknown. Lyrical explosions are opposed to killing explosions.

21. 12. 83, D5, Delhi

Hearing about death of a poet, the language of thought returns to ritual of powerful silence. On 13 December 1983, poet Nichita Staneascu passed away. We evoked his poetry in our class of Romanian language. We translated his last poem signed by him, Towards Peace. It is more shanti than pax.

Translator translates poet as wood-cutter. Forest of symbols correspond with forest of non-symbols. Wood-cutter thinks to Savitry without translation. How silent Yama is taking-giving life there.