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Ștefan
Dumitrescu - BRÂNCUŞI
PIESA DE
ETATRU „BRÂNCUȘI” TRADUSĂ ÎN ENGLEZĂ
TRADUCERE
MIOARA DUMITRESCU
ŞTEFAN
DUMITRECU
B R A N C U S I
(DRAMA IN THREE PARTS)
CHARACTERS:
Constantin
Brancusi
Miss Pogany
Artist`s
mother
God
Voice
B R Â N C U Ş I
(PIESĂ DE
TEATRU ÎN TREI PĂRŢI)
PERSONAJELE:
Constantin
Brâncuşi
Domnişoara
Pogany
Mama
artistului
Dumnezeu
Vocea
STEFAN
DUMITRESCU
ONE OF THE
GREATEST EUROPEAN WRITERS
WRITER
PROPOSED FOR THE NOBEL PRIZE
In this
introduction I will try to give a reliable overview of both the work and the
writer Stefan Dumitrescu, today 62 years old, member of the Writers Union of
Romania, one of the greatest European writers, with an impressive published and
unpublished literary work… By Stefan
Dumitrescu, Romania would indeed have the chance to take the first Romanian
Nobel Prize if the writer were not so envied and marginalized in his country …
a typical Romanian disease since the
Romanians are the only nation that have the saying „Let die the neighbour’s goat.” All of today’s
leading writers of Romania know that Stefan Dumitrescu is the writer with the
most important and rich literary work, but no one say a word about it… Instead
this writer has been proposed for many
years for the Nobel Prize by Cultural Foundations, Societies of writers, cultural personalities
…
When I first
read his books and manuscripts, I was, as Ana Blandiana, deeply impressed by
the „shocking” talent of the young writer, by the depth and originality of his
ideas put into his writings, by his thirst of knowledge, his obsession to enter
as deep as possible into the „abysmal condition of the human phenomenon” (from
this point of view Stefan Dumitrescu carries forward the Dostoyevskian request,
to know the depth of the human soul, and of the „Romanian soul.” See his novel,
„FM Dostoevsky commited suicide in Bucharest”, which is now released on the
international online book market by an American publisher). The first books and
manuscripts, that came to me by-ways in the 80s when the writer was very young,
talked about an author who had not only an overflowing imagination with a deep
and warm style, but who came in the literature with a blast and a new spirit,
whose literary innovations, whose endeavor stood outside literature.
From this
point of view the poet Ana Blandiana, who launched and published Stefan
Dumitrescu much in the 1970s, was right to talk about an author who came with ”
his risky released soul” in the space of literature. „I say that this launch is
courageous and risky because it occurs outside the well-worn road of
poetry, because Stefan Dumitrescu both versifies beautifully and with much
talent in a known or surmised lyricism
but he creates his own frames, his own
reference systems „). Ana Blandiana is the writer who, in 1971, in the
„Amphitheatre” Review, had the courage to impose Stefan Dumitrescu in the
Romanian literature, and presented him to the public in a brilliant way:
„A country
with cosmic valleys in which birds blossom, whose sky is sustained by the choir
of virgins, whose flags are the souls of ancestors gone to battle, a
hallucinating country, a land full of songs and blinded by the light, is
glorified by Stefan Dumitrescu in his recent lyrics, a strange poet, with his
soul released risky, bridge over the liric gap, whose shore beyond can`t be
known. I say that this launch is
courageous and risky because it occurs outside the well-worn roads of poetry, because Stefan Dumitrescu both
versifies beautifully and with much talent in a known or surmised lyricism but he creates his own frames,
his own reference systems. Each of his
poems is an opening into a world created by himself, a world in which birds
walk armed and sing in the ruins of the flutes. Talent beyond any doubt,
restless and constantly burning, author of essays reinterpreting myths and of
poems rebuilding the universe, Stefan Dumitrescu is a tougher, more steeply,
more subdued to suffering and anguish than the clear Dan Verona, but equally
certain and True.”
Ana
Blandiana, „Amphitheater” Review, no. 2, 1971.
The poet
Ştefan Dumitrescu started being discovered by Miron Radu Paraschivescu, who
published his first poems in 1967 in the magazine „Branches” (”Ramuri”), under
the pseudonym, when he was only 17 years
old. In a warm and encouraging
letter, Miron Radu Paraschivescu wrote
him: „If you’re going on this way, my dear, you`ll go a great way”. The poet Miron Radu Paraschivescu`s urge is
seen today, nearly half a century, to have been a prophecy, a revelation!
However. Ana
Blandiana is that who found and released him as a far-reaching writer who over
40 years would give an impressive work in the Romanian and European literature.
Two years
later, in autumn 1973, because Stefan Dumitrescu was a hope of Romanian
literature, Adrian Paunescu demands to open the famous and criticized the FLAME
Literary Circle with the poet Stefan Dumitrescu. The young poet read at the
first meeting of the FLAME Literary Circle an entire volume of poetry, entitled
„Nicolae LABIŞ- COSMOGONIC PORTRAIT „, which strongly impressed the public. On this occasion Adrian Paunescu
said about Stefan Dumitrescu: „Stefan Dumitrescu is a chance of the Romanian
literature. Stefan Dumitrescu is a great chance of the Romanian Literature „.
Literary
critic Cioculescu Serban, who took part at that first meeting, was impressed by the poetry of Stefan
Dumitrescu, saying about him: „Stefan Dumitrescu is a very interesting poet and
I will watch him with all my attention”
Serban
Cioculescu, „FLAME” REVIEW, 1973
The writer
and scientist Ioan Crisan saw Stefan Dumitrescu as a great writer since 1973.
„Stefan Dumitrescu is a deep and serious writer. He`s one of those writers who
gives content to a whole era”
IOAN CRISAN,
writer, scientist, 1973.
Many of
Stefan Dumitrescu`s manuscripts, because they had no chance to pass censorship,
circulated in the years of communism „underhand”, privately. Therefore this
writer’s books could not be published during the Communist period. After 1990
‘s his books were to be printed one after another. Especially the writer was
part of the Revival Group since 1976, a group that helped young people who were
very gifted creators to make discoveries, to create theories, literary and
scientific works, which later triggered in Romania a kind of cultural
Renaissance, Renaissance to draw after it the entire Romanian
society…Unfortunately the Romanian Intelligentsia and the Romanian people,
Romanian society are too sick, too lacking in energy, are suicidal to be able
to trigger a renaissance. We, Romanians, are good only to assassinate our
values, to promote shabby fellows, nulities and thieves, and throw aside each
other. It is a very effective way by which we commit suicide.
Discussion
with ION CRISAN, writer, scientist, 1973.
As I said,
since the early works of Stefan Dumtrescu, I realized that I am in front of a
particular writer, not only very talented, burning like a flame, who comes in
literature with tremendous strength, but has another „size”, another dimension,
another caliber, he is on a European level, is the writer of European or
worldwide breadth, like Thomas Mann,
Albert Camus, Garcia Marquez. How George Enescu is in music, for example,
compared with other Romanian composers. His literary creation, whether there
are volumes of poetry, prose, novels, short stories, or theater, „sounds”
different, it does not sound at all localist, has a European timbre, has a
European dimension. In fact in the presentation done by Ana Blandiana to Stefan
Dumitrescu, she intuited, revealed that truth, when the writer was only 21,
that: „Stefan Dumitrescu both versifies beautifully and with much talent in a
lyricism known or surmised, and creates
his own frames, his own reference systems. Each of his poems is an opening into
a world created by himself, a world in which birds walk armed and sing in the
ruins of the flutes”and ” a soul released risky, a bridge over the lyric gap,
whose shore beyond is unknown „.
Stefan
Dumitrescu is really a bridge between classic and modern, a bridge over the gap
between the national and universal spirit, between real and transcendental. We
believe that we have defined him very well in a literary Chronicle, written in
1993, an excerpt from this Chronicle being on the fourth cover of the prose
book „Ancestral Bottom „, 1993. Here’s a
„picture” as true as possible of the writer, as we saw him in 1993: „Poet,
prose writer, playwright, essayist, literary critic, philosopher, political
analyst, this man so good, with an expression of a ever wondering child, is one
of the most ardent and restless consciousness of his age. When the Romanians
will really know the true depth of Stefan Dumitrescu`s work, will be surprised
that a writer of the same value like Thomas Mann, or Albert Camus, was unknown
among them. At the end of this century, Ştefan Dumitrescu is the spearhead of
the Romanian literature thrust deeply into universality. I would compare with
Mircea Eliade, but, being acquainted
with much of his work, I know that Stefan Dumitrescu is like himself.
Francesca Pini, litarary critic, 4th
cover of the book : „Ancestral Bottom”, 1993
In the same
year the writer Ion Zubaşcu noticed also that the writer Stefan Dumitrescu is
part of that very rare typology of „total” writers, creators who manifest a
wide space of creation, which open up new paths „in culture” and found „schools” in their lifetime. Here’s what the
editor Ion Zubaşcu wrote in the „Magazin” Review , in 1993, when the was 43 years old: „In everything you do and
think, you rather have the aura of a founder. I think you should gather around
your disciples, by working directly on the live destinies through the students
who would be able to continue your work, raising forts of the spirit or cities
of mind just as durable as those created under the shade of the ancient olive
trees. We are living in times too petty
and money-oriented to find a magazine open immediately to what you think. The
only solution would be to ask a publishing house like Humanitas that might be
interested in the scope of your visions. ”
ION ZUBAŞCU,
writer, Express Magazine, no. 4, 1993
Very
talented, as Ana Blandiana presented him (Stefan Dumitrescu first wrote
poetry), as the literary columnist of „Reality” Magazine, Dumi Nedelcu, wrote :
„Reading the lyrics of Stephen Dumitrescu,
remain somewhere between real and ideal, lecturing his novel „Delirium”,
a sequel of M. Preda’s masterpiece, we are amazed by his talent and
originality. This novel will soon be printed and we recommend it to all lovers
of true literature „, Dumi Nedelcu, „Realitatea” Magazine, Galatzi, June 2000).
An exciting
text was written by Doru Motoc: Stefan Dumitrescu is first and foremost a great
poet: „You wrote a book of love poetry absolutely exceptional (” MOUNT BURDENED
WITH LOVE „, Marea Neagra Publishing House.”) . That’s all I read most
beautiful and noble in recent years, when our poetry was suffocated by a wave
of hogwash and abject pornography. The fact that you still keep the flag up
gives me courage. But again and again I realize how right you were when you
made that fantastic diagnosis that we are an axiofag people (distroying its own values). That’s
right! We don`t appreciate our true values, we don`t help and promote them,
we don`t know how to attract the world attention upon them, to make the world
aware of them. What a pity! ” 29.05.
2008 Doru Moţoc.
But Stefan Dumitrescu
is a novelist with a terrible force, who investigates the inside continent of
the human phenomenon, penetrating its depth, describing the folds of the human
„ocean bottom” accurately and with a humanism that impresses. That’s why I
compare him in the text above with
Thomas Mann, Albert Camus.
Here’s how
the writer Alexandru Magereanu sees Stefan Dumitrescu after reading his novel
„Delirium, Volume II”, the sequel to the novel „Delirium, Volume I, by Marin
Preda as Marin Preda would have written
it (we sincerely believe that the novel „Delirium”, Volume II was inspired from
other dimension by the spirit of Marin Preda, very rarely in literature) :
„Dear
Stefan! I have read Moromete`s novel all in one breath. („Delirium, Volume II”
sequel of „Delirium, Volume I” by Marin Preda) and I really liked how you wrote
it. I say, leave aside all the concerns and go on and write novels! You have
plenty of talent, do not waste it. Take advantage of it and give our Country
and our literature everlasting works! Take advantage of the your age and life
that gives you so many opportunities and you will remain unforgettable for
readers, for the country. You`ve got a magnetic power in every word written!
You have a special power to catch the essence of life! You`ve already had a
valuable experience of writing! It won`t be hard to manage. So write, dear
Stefan! ”
Alexander
Magereanu, poet, Oradea, 80 years old
But Stefan
Dumitrescu is a very talented playwright. He
is certainly one of the greatest world playwrights, giving more valuable
plays than Camus, Sartre, Tennesse Williams or Arthur Miller. Here’s what
impression Dumitrescu`s plays have made to some
theater people, who really wanted to help him acting his plays: Liviu
Ciulei, the great Director, said in a letter to the author of „Laughter”: „I
understand why thirty years ago Teatrul Mic (Little Theater) put the play ”
Laughter ” into the drawer. Of course
the modern style of the play scared them – at that time– and they were thoughts
about possible allusions and comparisons with that present ( communist age).
Let us hope that God will give me strength to see this play on the stage of
Bulandra Theater in Bucharest. ” (Liviu Ciulei).
The Romanian
actor, Celestine Duca, settled in Paris, wanted to help Stefan Dumitrescu to
stage „Laughter” in Paris : „I`ve read your play „Laughter” and I found it
interesting, original and fun! I’m with you. I will help you break up the crust
of indifference. I intend to give it to the Theatre of Poche, founded by Eugen
Ionesco, where his plays were performed and by virtue of which he became a
member of the French Academy (Académie française). I also think to give it to
an actor, very well-known in France, who has mastered the art of laughing”. –
Celestine Duca. July 16, 2000. Paris.
Ion
Tobosaru, Professor of theater science, academician, spoke admiringly about
Stefan Dumitrescu`s talent and theatre vocation: „His vocation to dramatic
literature gets the colours of certainty.
“Laughter”
by Ştefan Dumitrescu makes up a lasting opus regarding its structure and the
problems that spur the interest and the expressive literary phrases. His talent
is obvious, as well as his dramatic experience. Inventive, intelligent,
thorough and allusive-document and
fiction, art of moral portrait and of intensity of conflict – man and drama
create a structure which the literary guild has to enlighten, to submit it to a
redeeming projection and effort. ”
ION TOBOSARU
– Professor, academician, aesthtetician. Text on the fourth cover of the book
„Complete Dictionary of I. L. Caragiale`s drama”
Romanian-born
Argentinian writer Alina Diaconu, who translated his poems and stories
publishing them in Argentina, realized that she meets a great writer:
„I
congratulate you, you are a great writer, I’m extremely glad knowing you this
way”.
ALINA
DIACONU, Romanian-Argentine writer, established in Argentina, 28, July, 2007 ..
I am very
happy that at those over 70 years of mine I saw, a long time before others, in
my young brother, Mr. Stefan Dumitrescu, a major European writer, a writer as
great as, if not greater than many writers who got the Nobel Prize. I remain, as in 1994, of the same belief that
they are not many writers in the world to be „total writers”, who give valuable
works in all genres of literature, and who are, as Mircea Eliade, the Romanian
famous writer, scientists, too. Here’s
what I wrote about Stefan Dumitrescu in 1994, nearly 20 years ago:
„Stefan
Dumitrescu is currently one of the Romanian writers with the largest and the
most profound work. Type of the total
writer, and of the total man, Stefan Dumitrescu wrote novels which will
have celebrity of Marquez’s novels, plays that will shake the consciousness for
centuries from now, essays with an impressive horizon of synthesis, a „History
of Romanian dramaturgy” as well as poems for children of an infinite
tenderness. In this volume, a volume of impressive poetry screaming his slove
for Basarabia, and also his consciousness of
deep „wound” of national being, Stefan Dumitrescu reminds us in the most
painful way, that we are Romanians, that
we are ONE BEING with the mourning Feeling and Consciousness!”
Francesca
Pini, lecturer, 1994.
Few people
know that Stefan Dumitrescu, one of the important members of the Futurology
Office in Bucharest, is the one who discovered the Third major Type of
Intelligence (the writer is Licentiate of the Faculty of Philosophy, Bucharest,
1973, his specialities being Psychology, Pedagogy, Sociology , Economics,
Futurology, fields in which he gave valuable works) which he called „Positive
Intelligence and Negative Intelligence”. Stefan Dumitrescu is the author of a
paramount work that revolutionizes Economics, entitled „XXI CENTURY NEW
ECONOMIC SCIENCE OR PSYCHO-ECONOMICS” describing the discovery of the economic
system of the future, called the
„SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM OF EVOLUTION” . It`s an economic system that knows no
unemployment and economic crisis, which will likely save human civilization
from this terrible crisis, artificial and natural at the same time, which we
are living now.
Few people
know that Stefan Dumitrescu is the one who discovered „Ways by which countries can emerge from the
current economic crisis VERY EASILY IN A
SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, without being diminished wages and pensions, without
being increased taxes and with no Unemployment” (This paper was published in
serial in the” Destiny ” Review of the Romanian Writers’ Society of Canada)
These
Dumitrescu`s findings could save from
suffering, from stress and humiliation billions
of people … Maybe someone interests them …
Other
author’s works, which could become global best-seller, and would do a lot of
good to people, are: „Theory of
Revolution of Good” and „Psychotherapy and Education through Good!
Stefan
Dumitrescu resembles Mircea Eliade, as I said, that is he is the author of a
precious literary value, very complex, covering a wide range of topics, ideas,
myths, which he interprets in a unified, original vision, but he is also the
creator of a scientific work, in the field of social science, an extraordinary,
pioneering work, which opens up new horizons in human knowledge.. Stefan
Dumitrescu is by excellence a far-reaching mind of synthesis, so we find that
literary and scientific works intertwine, they enrich one another. By his
entire work Stefan Dumitrescu joins the universal triad Mircea Eliade, Eugène
Ionesco (the author of an original drama of great value) and Emil Cioran.
Dumitrescu is an essayist of substance, with an astonishing power of analysis
and of re-interpretation. It`s no doubt that being published by Great Western
Publishing Houses, Stefan Dumitrescu
will impress the readers and will gain
their sympathy and love.
I have
already said that Stefan Dumitrescu has been proposed for many years to award
the Nobel Prize by Cultural Foundations, such as Romanian Aid Cultural
Foundation, „Country” Foundation , by Societies of writers, such as Society of
Romanian Writers of Basarabia, several cultural figures, Publishing houses,
Magazines. We present below the proposal to the Nobel Prize Committee in
Stockhlom sent by the Romanian Writers’ Society of Moldavia, that impressed us
with its essentiality and objectivity.
„NOBEL
ADRESA
Det Norske
Nobelinstitutt
Henrik
Ibsens gate 51,
N-0255 OSLO
+47 22 12 93
10 FAX
ROMANIAN
WRITERS SOCIETY FROM BASARABIA
PROPOSAL FOR
AWARDING THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE TO THE ROMANIAN WRITER STEFAN
DUMITRESCU SENT TO THE COMMITTEE FOR
AWARDING THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
Thr Romanian
Writers Society of The Republic of Basarabia, whose target is to promote and
develop the literary process, consolidation and rebirth of the Romanian
spirituality in Moldova, the patriotic
education on the basis of the national historical traditions, linguistic
education of all the generations, to cultivate among the members of this association
the particular Romanian soul and nature,
its ancient traditions, proposes the writer Stefan Dumitrescu to the Committee
for Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm.
The reason
of our proposal : nowadays the writer Stefan Dumitrescu is a writer with a vast
and deep literary work. We are very much impressed by the depth of his thoughts
about the destiny of hunam beings, his
infinite love for His Majesty : Man
A total
writer and a total man, he is a remarkable personality in our contemporary
literature, creating immortal universal value works.
We wish him
good luck and great success in his nobel way to be awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature! May God bless him!!!
PRESIDENT OF
THE
ROMANIAN
WRITERS OF BASARABIA,
MIHAI
CIUBOTARU
20 September
2010
str.
Albisoara 84/5 ap. 13
MD-2005, Chişinău, Republic of. Moldova
I honestly
believe that these words explain, define and grasp the essence of Stefan
Dumitrescu:
„STEFAN
Dumitrescu is one of those writers who has come into literature with a
tremendous strength. His books, whether novels, short stories, essays, plays or
poetry, are most shocking, stunning, revealing the drama, pain, abysmal depth of human psychology,
absurdity and paradox of human nature. But all these works have in them a
thrill of a deep tenderness, a delicacy , a bright beauty. This dimension of
his creation is seen mainly in his very rich
literature for children: tales, stories and poetry for children”.
Francesca
PINI, literary critic, 1995. (text on the fourth cover of the novel ” You will
be air,too,” published by ANAMAROL Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007)
PROFESSOR
FRANCESCA PINI, LITERARY CRITIC.
B R A N C U S I
By Stefan
DUMITRESCU
INTRODUCTION
The play
„Brancusi” by Stefan Dumitrescu is a spectacular and successful attempt to
provide by the means of drama, in ana
rtistic and philosophical show on stage, the personality of the great sculptor
Constantin Brancusi and his work of genius, in a broad overview, a
metaphor-parable, a reditative essay that helps the reader or the viewer to
enter the depth of the great sculptor`s work and to understand in a coherent,
suggestive and philosophical vision, the
great artistic and epistemological approach of Brancusi. Stefan Dumitrescu`s
attempt to include in a depth and solid grounded overview the whole work and
life of Constantin Brâncişi is certainly a bold approach, we believe that few
writers would dare to do and complete it … After reading or seeing this drama
ssay, „Brancusi” by Stefan Dumitrescu, we feel that we understand the Titan
from Hobita better, more clearly and deeply … In the vision of the playwright
Stefan Dumitrescu, Brancusi seems even greater, and deeper, and more human, closer
spiritually to us .
We, finally
think that we are in front of a play rarely seen in the theater history that
inspiringly approaches and develops an amazing broad theme, in which Brancusi’s
work and life intertwine, giving birth to a wonderful life and philosoohical
story, heroic and sublime at the same time.
This play is
all that has been written deepest, most essential and comprehensive about the
great personality of Constantin Brancusi and his entire Work.
PUBLICATĂ
AZI 25. 09 2017 ȘTEFAN DUMITRESCU
B R A N C U S I
(THEATROLOGIC
ESSAY)
B R Â N C U Ş I
( ESEU
TEATROLOGIC )
SCENE I
A workshop
of sculpture. We can see inside pieces of unhewn marble, others carved in an
initial form. Brancusi’s workshop also suggests first the image of a rustic
interior. Between the stage and the
workshop we can see a window, a kind of glass wall through which the sculptor
and objects forming the interior of this room can be seen , which can suggest incomunicability or
sky. Or that what is happening on stage is going into other dimension.
Throughout the performance we will see the sculptor seated or standing, and
carving. Or moving around the workshop,
or resting, or smoking, and his thoughts and ideas, its inside language will be
heard in the room as coming from a speaker, or multiple speakers, giving the
impression that the artist’s voice, which will be heard slowly, sadly, as if
coming from another world, comes from somewhere very far away. From everywhere
in the universe.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (sits on a chair in front of a stone touching it) Stone! (whispering)
Stone! (For a moment we think we hear the sea waves hitting the shore) To take
the stone and give it a form as a being, a bird, for instance, means you take
it from there in the past, most back away in time. There for billions of years,
where it has been expecting tirelessly… and it has the power to wait forever.
And bring it in today’s moment. (we can hear his deep breath) What clearly I
see this thing. To bring stone from there, in the past, billions of years back
up to the present moment. (laughs kindly,
as for him, how old people do) Should I get scared and fearful of my power!
(Somewhat scared) But didn`t this power
twist me, distorted me? (Small
break, far away it seems to hear the sad and wild screams of seagulls)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Sometimes I feel it greater
than me. It, this power. And then as if it would mock me. But I learned it.
(put his ear on the rock and is listening to it carefuly for a while) I thought
I heard something, but it’s less what I want to know. Only my palm and touch
can tell me more … (deep breath, throttled voice) Stone does not speak, it
tells by itself, by its substance, by the order in which atoms were placed and
made the stone veins. And that’s a good thing … Being able to speak by youself,
and nothing else. (After a while of thinking, we hear the sad and desolated sea
waves) This is the most beautiful kind of silence I’ve ever heard, or the most
beautiful way of thinking.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: To express yourself through sound, through something else than you,
that speaks about a weakness of yours. (sadly silent) And through what can you
express yourself? Through sound, which
is a declined shadow, a form
fallen into chaos, a
disintegration of substance and form? (short pause) That’s why I like rock.
(thoughts run softly, silent for a while, sighs)
CONSTANTIN
BRANCUSI (looking into the distance, with an expression of pity on his face)
Thanks God I’m a sculptor. (his breath sounds weakly) Actually why should I
thank Him? (after a while, on the road a creaking car is passing away) It had
to be so, it had to happen this way … It is better to take things as they are,
as if this is the way they should be. The material I work with is very
petrified matter, condensed. It is billions of years old, and this is as if
your hand would stretch far into the past (speaks rarely, slowly) and you have
stretched with it, your soul would stretch, it would travel in time to take
some material out there in the depths of time. Where this rock gathered inside
so much silence as it is like a sponge. (bitter smile) And yet, although it
gathered such a long time, it would still gather billion years more. (we can
hear the bells of a church far away sunk into the ground) What`s the mystery of
this being? When the chisel cuts in stone, it cuts concentrated, essential time, the time that becomes like
glass, clear, blue. It diminishes the chisel edge and brokes it into pieces, if
you don`t know how to get close to it. (silence for a moment)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI (lost in thoughts) Yeah … If not, I would like to be a poet, for
material with which I work is nothing but a shadow of matter in chaos.
(thinking silently) I would like to carve in animated, living matter. (as if he expects to pass the time) I
know it, I felt that pain, though at first it was pride and joy, that dead
matter takes the animated form as if it were alive, often giving the impression
of more vivid than a face of a living being who has deceived you and forever
will deceive all that you gave birth to life. Consciousness of lies, of
deception has burned like a spark in my mind until now. A thing that a poet
never lives, because he knows from the outset that from the words he can hardly
make a mere copy. What he wants is a compilation of images that would be
possible only. So many times I wanted to break all I had chopped, but the idea
that from inert stone, billions of years
old, I can make a face that gives you the idea of life, is too much, so I
defeated my pain and I couldn`t break them. (he`s tired, sad) Now over the
years I have reconciled with this
thought. (silent. He gets up and walks thoughtfully through the workshop. Moves
few things from one place to another. Looking out the window absent -mindedly).
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI (has a faucal voice, as if he were a different character) I wanted to
carve the mountains at my place in the Carpathians. It still remains a secret
thought, maybe I’ll ever succeed. When I die, I will die with the thought that
I will do this in the other world where I`ll go. (Suddenly he keeps silent. It
sounds the melancholic and sad murmur of a mountain water) I look at the world
from above, like I always stand on top of a mountain where I see the world in
the distance … I think of the sculptor`s
mission and toil. (His voice suddenly becomes blurred, impersonal) To carve the
world, to sculpt the earth’s crust and give the earth a human form. And it just
flies with the image of man in the universe. But I think especially in
sculpting the world as world. To take the world and carve it after your thoughts
and your wish. And make it a beautiful divine world. Before which God
Himself, if He were the Creator of this world, to wonder and to revolt.
(loudly) To be sorry that He didn`t do it so beautifully. To be ashamed and
hurt Himself in universe that He made such an ugly world. (after a while.The sad cries of seagulls are heard far away)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : No, I never thought about it …
This could be just a secret plan of the artist and in the genius mind can arise
such a great idea. (Deep breath, as if sighing) What an evil thought… But what
a great thought! Genius, at a time when he
has the consciousness of his value, of his huge power in the world, can
fancy the foolish and evil thought to surpass God. Or maybe some genius people
can even fancy to humble God, and humble His nature. Here, I would like to
exceed Nature and exceed God … and get
up above them … But my rise above them should be a pure, beautiful lift, full
of purity and not humiliation: it should have no moral significance. And this
gesture to God and to nature means
nothing but the highest esteem of them … And the crowning of their labours and
faith to tend to them. (nostalgic, sad smile)
Satisfaction to have achieved them would overwelm me. This joy would
crush me, and this tendency towards them is nothing but a deep and calm happiness. An eternal happiness. (silence for
a while. We can hear thunders, at first slowly, a sign of the approaching
storm)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (slowly, as if telling stories or speaking to himself) Time goes by …
and we come into the world, and one thought leads us, for only there is this
something you came into the world and you stay in it to do … And your coming is not pure coming,
because at some point you forget that greatness of what you are… that man is a
thousand times greater than the greatness of the thing you have done in the
world. And you forget that, and at some point you think you only have to do
things in art. (After a while, walking among objects in the workshop. Thunders
are heard closer now) And then you forget yourself and you’re wrong. You seem
not to be the one you were before and the one you would be, you seem to be that
object. Maybe an artist is one who is not what he is for a long time , but he
sees himself as if he were the object of his art. At the same time saving the
one who you are, and imagining a greatness which is called idolatry, is the
great sin against matter. (sits. Watching
a statue for a long time). And against God.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (the screams of seagulls can be heard wildly, tragically, very close)
I fell into both mistakes … Now I’m fine, so must be an artist. He must be both
things at once. (an lightning crosses the sky) Well, how can you answer that
question, why we, people, have come in time? (a long smoldering thunder is
heard, , earth-shaking. The sculptor seems not to hear it) It is easy to answer,
as a philosopher, to this question, it`s much more difficult to answer as an
artist. (deep breath, gathering his energies) Supposing God exists, and He
created us. But after He created us? If He were Himself obliged to answer this
question, why He created us, He would not know what to say. (he is sad. Now
quite clearly is heard the sound of a creaking fountain, , then a dog barking,
as if we are in a Romanian village.) Well, I saw and felt it. He who created us
would not know what to say. Or this is great, but terribly frightening.
(initially blocked, then increasingly louder is heard the rumble coming from
inside the earth. The statues and objects in the room are seen staggering,
playing)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: There was another earthquake. The Romanian land shook again. Lay the
foundations which were not well prepared from the start. A nation is like a
cathedral. The Romanian people is like the Arges Monastery. What stands during
the day, crumbles at night. That was from the beginning. What the Dacians had
built, collapsed when the Romans came. Then what built the protoromanians had
built, the old Romanians, our ancestors, collapsed every time when came
Vandals, Huns, Avars. Then came the Hungarians, Turks, Russians, Austrians,
Germans … (sighs) And finally we’ll come to destroy what we have built.
(looking forward as blind people do) The Cathedral, which is the Romanian
people, requires a too great sacrifice (tragically) that we could never give
it. Therefore the cathedral of Romanian people will never be finished, and what
we build during the day, will crumble at night … (far away, from the depths of
forests, we hear the church bells tolling)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Hey, hey, hey, my thought went hither and thither … what was I
thinking?. (Deep breath) At the same time we did not come into the world, and
we didn`t make ourselves, and we didn`t
want anything in time and in universe.
Although this thing would be the greatest if it had happened. (short pause)
Okay, if it hadn`t been happened.
(bitter laugh) Ha he he he! It’s good that we did not come by our own will in
time. If you think about it, philosophy would not know what to answer. That is
it could not. The only one which could answer that question would be art.
(after a while) and which of the arts? (after a while) Have I chosen the art
I`m toiling in? I have not chosen it …
But it’s good that so it happened. I might answer that question …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: A poet could not answer this question … the matter, material with
which he works with is the word, or the word was born in time. How old is it in
time? Several thousand years. Since the stone, the material I work with has billions of years.
Mine is linked to the universe, it`s lost in the universe far into the depths
of the universe. What is the poet`s material? That smoke, trembling talk, a
moan like a hot fume. For whatelse is the word than vapor coming out of your
mouth and immediately lost? The word does not bind the stone, it doesn`t bind
the universe like matter. I just do a precise similarity, a likeness. Between
the word and its substrate layer, it was
forgotten the layer, the word is a kind of anything else, it is the
substrate dead with a level, but further towards total extinction. Living
matter, I wonder, coming here, is it also somewhat a kind of degradation of the
material, of the stellar matter? (s a long moment of silence falls upon the
scene)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: How can we answer this question? If a philosopher can`t answer that
question? (meditating) He asks and gives answer to the question whether the
spirit, consciousness preceded the matter. Is the spirit prior or not to the
material existence? But if the philosopher was an artist, he wouldn`t ask this
question. An artist would ask about something, he would question: does the
existence love him? Does he love existence or not? A question a thousand times
prettier though more naive and more enlightened. Over many thousands of years,
if not hundreds, philosophy will look different. And we will seem naive
philosophers who were divided into two, and that all their lives they sought to
answer the question, who existed before, me or matter (rare, out of print) I
don`t wonder why I love the matter, I just love it, I find that I love it and
that`s all. Something within me tells it is good to love it.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: And I love it, and this love I put into my work. That`s all. But that
was our misfortune or maybe our chance … An artist, an artist is like an ax, he
is the cutting edge and the iron but the
handle is the philosopher. There is no pure artist, as I thought and I worked
my mind. The philosopher is in me, too, I tried to get rid of it, but I
couldn`t (sigh) and it is good that I couldn`t. (starts laughing)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (laughs as old people do) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! But neither he, the
philosopher, can`t be alone. Cannot.
Then what is the philosopher than an artist without grace? He is without grace,
but this loss of grace makes him good, for it brings him down to earth, and he
sees the world differently, more simply, and clumsily , and so he is more
useful. No philosopher so far hasn`t said he loves matter, but poets have said
it. (spits in his hand) And yet it is stranger than we thought this sort of men
called poets. Plato felt it more when he wanted to drive them out of the city,
than we suspect to. (short pause) Materialists have not answered the question
that the matter would be primordial, for they would love more matter than
spirit. The moment they gave this answer, they all loved themselves more than anything
else. (laughs heartily) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (enjoys himself laughing like old people do) What I found is really
great! When that philosopher comes to me, I`ll tell it to him! It may also be
here a perversion. They, because they love themselves, they wanted the truth to
be on their side. They affirmed the truth without loving it more than they loved themdelves. Who`s the
materialist who says he loves matter? I love matter! There would be no use if
philosophers were divided into two, those who love matter and those who hate
matter! (after a while. As we found in a Romanian village, in autumn, on the
hills surrounding a pipe sounds singing a sad mourning doina)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: And yet, what do I love matter for? When I realize that it`s greater
and better to hate it? (Deep breath) and actually I hate it. Because if I love
it with my soul and see in those red veins of the stone endless oceans of hot
rock, stellar matter, all the universe as an ocean of red lava, I actually hate
it. To take the matter from its frozen form, and leave it as it was. (short
pause) If I loved it I would leave it as it is, and I would put in front of it
like Buddha, and I admire it all my
life. (coughs a few times) And then wouldn`t be one thing, a human act
grater in the world than to admire matter, which is actually an exalted hymn of
matter … and before death I would be at peace, for I reached the ideal, and I fulfilled my
mission of poor human worm in this world. (the screams of seagulls sound very
close, clearly, heartbreaking)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: But I do not leave the matter as it is, take it and pour it in other
forms, as I love the shape, the being and bowl in which I am going to pour the
matter. Then I try to put it in the second and third form. As I like. How I
would love it. And placed it in the second form, that is in the born artwork, I
enjoy myself and I’m happy as a child. (short pause) Joy is two times greater,
because I know that this form is different from the first form, the one left by God. Perhaps it isn`t matter any
more. And I do not know if the second form isn`t a degradation of the first
form, as sound is no substance, no matter, but its degradation. It is a shadow,
a degradation of its substrate. Matter has no form first, or has, of cosmic
lava flowing forever … and so, I give it
a form. (short pause) This form is also bigger than the first form in the
eternity of time or not? I like it, and it says something to people, but in the
first form, matter tells us much more than the form carved by me, only we
humans do not know how to read, how to hear what the first form tells us. (a
thunder is lost in the distance)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (sighing) And then I have a heartbreaking longing, a nostalgia for the
first form … Because the first creation is destruction first, destruction of
the form in which God left the rock, the material, and only then is creation. I
always have a longing and a nostalgia
for the material I’ve killed to put it in another form. (emotional, pathetic, although
he seems exhausted)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: This nostalgia is nice because it still binds me to matter. It makes
me remember it and think and wonder if I
didn`t create above it. Only then, when I had created a form above the first
form of creation, we would have done a good thing …. Above the greatness of
primordial matter. Yes, only then I am forgiven by matter. By God. And only
then I have the right to enjoy my creation! (Goes and sits in front of other
statues. Creaking of a passing car on the way sounds amazingly concrete)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Where are they gathering, where do
these ideas come in my mind flowing clearly like a water thread? (deep breath, like a crying) It
means that they take shape there in me, deep in me, as the spring, and then
flow out. Many of them flow through me without going through my mind. Means
that only when I don`t create, they come into mind. Now I understand why
philosophers see the idea, ideas, and they have just ideas in mind. (long
silence. Far away are heardthe bells of
a sheep flock grazing on hills)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (as if he is thirsty of talking to him forever) Did I get wise? Did I
get there, where knowledge reveals the world like a sea? Where did serenity and
largeness appear in me? (after a moment) I, a convinced materialist, and a
matter lover, I love the idealists. (deep breath,) Is it so? So it is, of
course! Well, I love them because they are poets. Real poets. And they kept
with the spirit. They loved the spirit above themselves … (sadly, pensively)
because they could not accept that matter is superior to spirit and appeared
before it. (sound of sea waves can be heard very clearly) Of course not, and
matter came before, but loving spirit rather more than matter, and because of
this „selfishness” – can not accept the primacy of matter- says a lot. And then
they are visionaries, because if the spirit, in whatever form it may be, never
appeared before the matter, well, after a period of evolution, whatever it is,
consciousness begins to play a larger role, fundamentally, than the matter.
(loudly, vibrating) It means that the
spirit eventually rises above matter and this is most important. Over a
thousand years, or maybe longer, laws of the universe will be changed by the
man`s will, that is by the spirit. Unless somewhere in the universe, now the will of a rational being subjects matter. And after a longer time of
evolution, consciousness, the spirit, will produce, will create matter. And
then, won`t we see that the idealists were right? But materialists are right
now, they tell the truth. (screams of the seagulls make us believe that we are
on the shore of a deserted, empty sea)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (loudly, as if he`s scared) Truth! I think this is the truth. (Hops
like a rabbit in front of guns)… If the spirit, conscience, will come again to
create matter, and even produce it, then the transition from the primary
stellar material to the living matter and hence to consciousness, and perhaps
to another higher form of consciousness, is no more degradation or a loss in
chaos, but on the contrary, it`s
Evolution. (laughing happily) He he he he!
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (amused) Something tells me it is so. No wonder they, philosophers say
of consciousness that it is the highest form of evolution of matter. (sank into
thoughts) But let`s compare primordial stellar matter. In the first phase the
Universe was made of stellar matter. It can continue to be so billion years. In
the second phase we imagine that all matter is a sort of universal brain. Could
it, this brain, continue to exist by itself, only by what it is? No, it
couldn`t, it would soon succumb. The Ocean of living, thinking matter, highly organized , would die
immediately. It would become what it was at first, dead matter. (Deep breath)
Now can we say, I wonder, that living matter, consciousness is superior to
stellar material? (after a while, scratching his neck. Somewhere nearby on
the hills a sad horn song sounds)
CONSTANTIN
BRÂNCUŞI: Well, damn it, if it would be so … (confused) But the conscious and
thoughtful matter reflects the other matter, dead matter, doesn`t it? … (Still
sad, looking ahead, as if he remembers something that terrifies him)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: But the latter does not reflect
the first one, it can`t know it, nor reflect it, but simply kills it if
it came in contact with it. Hm …? And at the same time matter also reflects
matter, to the extent that any object, any phenomenon, any substance, reflects
itself first, and then reflects the world. Or matter, matter itself reflecting
itself, it is clear that it reflects matter, it means the Whole. Yes, it is so.
(after a while of thinking when his gaze remains empty. slowly stroking his
beard tingly)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Oh, God, that scares me! Cannot you say that everything has a purpose.
The human being has been learned, and that came deeply into his heart, that
everything he does has a meaning, a purpose. That world, history are flowing in
one direction. Human being and his world is something that makes a sense, a
sense, that is a purpose which is perpetuated infinitely. The moment he would
wake up in a meaningless world, man would simply go mad. He would scream! (He
takes his hands to his mouth as if shouting over a gap) That scream … (seized
with fear, groaning in pain) I saw that cry, and then I carved Endless Column,
and I showed people that scream of the human being to the world, and to a
meaningless universe. The idea that the crying, man always removes it when he
faces the prospect of existing in a
meaningless universe, therefore to exist senselessly. (At this point you start
to hear at first weakly, then increasingly louder the horn of an ambulane)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : would solve a lot of things. I think this is the reason why Man has
invented Him. Or why God invented everything and made the man to solve a lot
of problems. (Smiles sadly) Hm … God’s invention was a colossal work, and it
served man. For me now the universe without God
seems deserted. (silent for a moment) Universe would better not exist
because it looked like a deserted house where no one lived and will never live
in it. You have an endless and awful feeling of emptiness. The feeling of
emptiness wakes up within a kind of sharp curiosity. A purple pain in the
stomach. (After a while) Hm! How strange! When have I realized this curiosity?
Then, the idea of your uniqueness, and hence a kind of greatness of Your
majesty. (laughs slightly)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Beautiful expression. A kind of greatness of human greatness. (deep
breath, cough as lung patients do) But then comes fear. The emptiness becomes
your existence in a future life. And lo and behold, it`s me, coming and knowing to enjoy the peace and the desert,
and I amscared. I’m scared now of the empty universe. (after a while) God would
have given me the feeling of a living inhabited universe, which for me, for us
humans, is welcome. It gives us a hardener feeling, we live the condition of
togetherness and a strange dust warmth.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (nostalgic) However, it is not true. Only to the extent that we are
weak, we believe it`s good that the
universe is inhabited by God. As far as we are weak … (coughs a few times) we
need this feeling of togertherness with someone, for the fear that it takes
away, and the warmth that it gives us. At the same time it does wrong to
us, or it does more harm. It teaches us
weak, slaves. While feeling of desert stirs us, the emptiness absorbes,
captivates us. We feel weak and afraid, we’re also one who is facing a
mountain. A desert is actually a mountain. (laughs slightly) Heh heh heh heh ….
Good, good, Costache … (resumes after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: But if this beautiful condition lived by the human before the empty
universe is for nothing? What world can be imagined more absurd than this!
(breathing in as if he faints, suddenly scared) If the stellar matter, after
billions of years, becomes a brain, then the whole universe is a brain, and
then succumbs, becoming again stellar matter in a moment, then it also tends
to, climbs the mountain of evolution, of time and becomes the brain again, and
so ad infinitum …? (with an expression of pain on his face) Oh God, what a
great and terrible spectacle! What fate has man got in this absurd and great
universe, which is like an hourglass, which empties
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (thinks, sighs) After empting, it overturns… to be filled again. And
it is the hourglass that I put in Endless Column, I mean I put it in the human scream. Hourglass
fills his mouth like a punch and doesn`t let him cry, it shuts his mouth not to
rise the scream from the depths of his soul. But what happens? Hourglass itself
turns into a crying. This is crazy!
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (a dog howling deathly, then it goes slowly) When I saw what I have
made, I shuddered myself. Man screaming in the Universe through the hourglass
of the universe. Or through his ability to be, through the form of this
possibility. Repeated hourglass, which is the history of the universe, itself
becomes for the man, turns itself into the flute for man`s sake. (short pause)
Flute, the instrument by which man screams his despair in front of his
universe, his alarm sign and his struggle sign. (suddenly amused) He he he he!
Nice thing! (he smiles to himself. His face expression is that of shed light)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : That’s what I say to man by my column that stands there on the field
of Targu Jiu, far away! (sounds like mourning of a bell from another world)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: What hurts me is that man does not understand, because you have to understand
again and again … If he understood, it wouldn`t be too early nor too late …
(meditating) And maybe it is good that it is too early and that man is too
weak, too stupid, too unevolved. After a long time … (thinking, sighs) After a
long time he will realize that he can not prevent the hourglass of the
universe, and then he ‘ll be able to do it. And in the end, but very late,
perhaps too late, he will be able to do this! (excitedly, as if crying) But not
too late and the universe hourglass won`t overthrow again. (Starts laughing all
of a sudden sadly in as old his sleeves men) And the brain of the universe
won`t become again stellar material. (thinks, he`s very sad. Somewhere
close, sounds the creaking of a fountain)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : How many times has the universe become a universal brain so far? I
mean, how many times has the hourglass of the universe overthrown before? A
thousand times? Logically it would have
returned an infinity of times. And infinity of times, that matter which became a universal brain hasn`t got the idea
that at last it would extinct. Will become again the stellar matter. (takes a
deep breath and we can hear his heart beating tired and scared) Could this Brain be horrified by the idea of
death, and of stellar matter and could He revolt ? And after having revolted,
would He have taken all measures that this infinite turning back of the
hourglass to have been finished? It would start a continuous ascent of that
Brain-matter, a forever evolution. (dejected) Hm! How far can you go thinking …
(silence for a while. Then becomes pale. Tottering, he gives a slap in his head. Yells with all his
might)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (dramatically, frightening)
Aaaaaaaaaa!
(rising his face, screaming) Gooooooood! My Gooooood! (his legs tremble.
Crawling to the bed, he sits pale on it. His hands shake )
Constantin
Brancusi: God, my God! How terrible it is! How couldn`t I think of it brfore?
(breathing hard, exhausted) I have to get over it.. If I resist and pass over
it means I`m tough. And I’m lucky … (now he`s quiet. Stares into vacancy like a
blind man)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (a domestic barking of a dog some houses away) Maybe it’s better that
I experienced this revelation. That showed me how terrible can it be … Because
I have to go back through my art to warn man. To tell man the truth. To
announce humanity this terrible idea … (after a while. Far away you can hear the lamentation of a mourner as
in villages in Oltenia)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: How didn`t I come up with this idea so far?
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (groaning in pain) It’s like it would have been hidden for me so many
years. I felt, I had this feeling that it was hidden for me . And now I see. It
was like a lightning in the night which illuminates the sky, blinding you. Like
me, the interval between of stellar matter and the universal brain, during the time passed forever, when the
hourglass overturned, it`s an infinite number of times, between an overturn and
another, there was someone like me. (Tired) Who realized that hourglass would
topple and he
warned
people. He told the men the great truth, or to that brain which hadn`t become a universal brain yet. (as if
crying, terrified) He warned about the hourglass overthrow, the possibility of
death, the specter of a return to stellar matter. (louder) And he said, revolt
against the hourglass! (shouting) Stop it! (Scared, panting) And they even
tried it, but they could not. (Screaming) They couldn`t! They couldn`t! (after
a moment) My Goood, how hard it is !
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : And maybe every time this happens. (his frightenig face) Every time
between stellar
Matter and
the universal brain appeared someone having this idea. But every time the
hourglass overturned. (meditating a few minutes)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Will it reverse this time, too? (short pause) Hmmm, I`ll be thinking
about this for a long time. Maybe all my life. I`m sorry I cannot think about it beyond, in the other world. It`s bad there isn`t any
world beyond as saying the faith of our ancestors in Gorj. (sad) I would be
thinking all the time in the world beyond, only of that I would have thought,
it wouldn`t be a greater happiness … (shaking, he looks like a fool) It can`t
be a greater happiness than this! And I would think of this idea until the
hourglass of the universe overturned and
the lava of the stellar matter flew and melted my petrified members. (Grieved)
But I would bring it to an end. (Falls into a long moment of meditation)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (gesture with his arm) However, in the long run the overthrow of the
hourglass will be stopped. The universe beating as a heart, by contracting it
will stop this reflex movement, and will no longer contract, turning into
stellar material. (his face lights up easily) It will grow infinitely. (after a
while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Oh, God!, what a great idea! (stands up, lively. His face lights up
again, infusing the light that we can see in today’s photos) No way, at last
the hourglass will no longer reverse! Even though thousands of beings like me
so far in the past eternity thought this idea between two reversals of the
hourglass. (agitated breathing) Or just for this, that until now thousands, of
infinite human beings have thought the idea , that`s why in the end it will be
possible! (laughing like dotards) Heh heh heh heh heh heh … (a thunder crosses
the sky announcing a near storm)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Yes, that’s why! This huge idea required infinite sacrifices. It’s a
too big achievement that it can`t be done easily. (after a while of thinking)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Yes, yes, what would happen if it could be possible just in my life
time? During this time when the hourglass has a very long time to topple?
(silent for a moment when silence is awfully heavy)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Yes, exactly, what would happen if just in this time there is the last
hourglass that no longer topple again?
(As if all his powesr are back) I`ll cut the Endless Column, I’ll cut
it! And there won`t be the Endless Column anymore. (rubs his hands happily)
S C E N E I I
Same setting
as in the first scene. On a side door enters a woman in the sculptor`s
workshop. It seems to be
MIIS
POGANY : He who was working around,
welcomes her with a smile. He asks her to sit. Then he sits. Miss Pogany seems
sad, or rather a shadow of her.
MIIS
POGANY :
(immaterial melancholy) Glad to find
you, Costache …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (thinking) Welcome. I thought about you a lot these days … I missed
my mother and my family, far from there, in a village of Oltenia, where they
are. When they think of me, I feel them. And for a while they are thinking, at
a time I feel that wind of longing reaching up to me. Who knows what happened ?
(crying) Lest that my mother died. (screams of
seagulls can be heard clearer now)
MIIS
POGANY :
(smiling, like smoke) I think you sensed that I come.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (his face lighting up slowly)
Who knows …. But it’s good you came. I`ve missed talking to a woman. To have a
woman to talk to. (short pause, thinking) You, women, as artists, although you
do not know it, communicate with the source, with the source of the world and
life. (turning his head and looking at her) Or you are a little the source of
the world … And we, when we watered from you, we watered from the source of
world and life. And we feel better and we get well again… (you can hear the
waves deserted, indifferently)
MIIS
POGANY :
(remembering) That’s right, Costache, I`ve been missing you, too. (now
you can hear the murmur of a mountain stream)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (meditating) I understand … (rare, tired) Woman, in the life of the
great spirits, played, should have played a very big role … (stops to breath)
Firstly she feels the genius, she feels the genius` great soul. Now I don`t
understand if they all feel that , or only some of them.
MIIS
POGANY :
(sad) Not all of them. Only some.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Is it so? If I think about it …it`s natural. What kind of feeling is it, I wonder?
MIIS
POGANY :
(streching his hand) You see, woman gives birth to genius …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (stretching his hand as if he wants to touch something) I remember
Ioana. Ioana from Craiova. It`s like I see her. How much I loved her, my Lord …
and I`m still loving her.. She felt the fate I have in this world, and I went,
I made it through the world like a blind man on the plains, led by my instinct.
I asked her to marry me and she refused me … (smiles to a lure) The
washerwoman`s daughter.
MIIS POGANY
: Can you see her, Costache? You are looking through the air as if you can see
her … and she would be alive and would move coming towards you.
CONSTANTIN
BRANCUSI: (thinking) So it is…
MIIS
POGANY :: This hurts me a little.. If I hadn`t known that I am there
within you, and you call me to watch me…
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Yes, I call you … I called you in stone and I`m watchin you outside
myself. Her … I took her out of me. I couldn`t. She also would be worth it.
MIIS
POGANY :
(sad) What about me, Costache?
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I watered my soul from the life of world through you. You were the
jug I drank from. And I honoured you
properly and I put your image on the world`s sky. For thousands and
thousands of years and for thousands and thousands of people you are the
WOMAN…. All women of the world are aligned as solders behind you … And you
represent them. You are their prophet … the symbol of feminine mystery. . (a
creaking car passes along the road)
MIIS
POGANY :
(sad, mysterious) Yes, Costache …. it is so … (the same car creaking
that has been passing on the road since the beginning of the world)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: But how do you feel the genius? It is unknown to me. How do you feel,
how did you feel it? (After a while) When you used to came, I perceived you as
a butterfly turning around the candle…
MIIS
POGANY : That’s right … I was a
butterfly coming out of darkness burning my wings to your candle flame … Yes, I
was happy. And I was well. (after a while) You see Costache … we, women, we also create the world. They both
create the world… man and woman. But it`s the woman who has been keeping the
world in her womb. And the history. (After a while, sighing) There, in her
womb, there is the genesis of the world. (as if she laments) And she knows
that. Feels this. If she doesn`t know by her mind, there, in her subconscious, she
knows that. Her unconscious or subconscious knows that, it knows that there in
her womb, the world is created and emerges… That’s why she feels the man, she
predicts his genius. Isn`t she the one who created him? And of all those she
gave birth, she encounters him (trembling, excited) she meets the one who has
divine grace… She feels this. For he is different from what she knew before…
(evocative) She hadn`t put grace in that body, the divine gift given by God, , and now here he is, she can
see him, she feels that divine fragrance. Something that is strange, unknown to
her. It`s foreign to her substance, to her banality and normality, to her human
earthy substance. Therefore she claims to serve him, and worship this man full
of grace. But on the other hand she runs out of his way. (short pause) Your
Ioana must have been a churchy, pios girl, Costache, as she ran away from you, because it happened to me quite
different.. In my curiosity to touch the grace, to feel the grace that God had
put in you, and tends to him were greater than fear … And I came to you, I have
tended to your grace. As you water from a
woman, you drink her soul, bent like a watershed, so I was, as I had
raised under the Divine in heaven. See what I mean?
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (lost, deserted) Yes, I see, I see…
MIIS
POGANY :
(as if mourning) The woman is a wound of matter, Costache … a tear.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : The man alone is a half. (sad)
Half a wound, half a tear, half longing … So the woman alone is still only
half. One is the earth, its vault which is located in the plain ground, another
is the other half of the sphere, vault of heaven. Both of thwm seek wholeness.
It’s not by chance that procreation, ie creation of man, is possible only when
man and woman are one, that is they are a whole, a sphere. (as if reminding)
Then the potency of the whole is the highest, and it is capable
of procreation, of creation of the world. But the state of the whole can not
last forever, just for a moment, and in that moment occurs procreation. (tired)
Then the two halves of Wholeness get
apart, and each one, alone, leads its life thinking to the other half.. And I
saw it, and I showed it to people. (Clear sounds of a plaintive song of a bird
in the wilderness)
MIIS
POGANY : Yes, Costache, I know …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Yes, the question is whether the human being as a whole … Here, when
the halves stick and the whole is moulded, let it be so, a whole, forever.
MIIS
POGANY : Do you think of woman and man, Costache?
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Yes.
MIIS
POGANY : It would die.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I know it would die. But why does it die, here’s the secret!
(silence) I do not think of androgynous, androgynous is just foreshadowing for
the whole, or as they say, it is a failed attempt to be one …it is only a humiliated abortion of th whole. (tragic)
It’s like you want to touch the sky with your hand, and realize that you fail.
(tired, panting for breath) And then I started and I`ve made the whole. But
alas, after finishing it, there wasn`t any greater suffering than mine! It was
a whole. but it was made of stone! It was a whole, but it was dead. (as hallucinating)
Which was not true because the whole is alive! But my whole was entirely stone.
But I froze! When I saw that it gives you the illusion of being alive. And so
it seemed to be alive, and for thousands of people it is alive, but I had known
before that it is not. (with tight fists) And then I got the idea, to smash it
with the sledge-hammer. I was frantic and I was also happy, and I was
frightened by my madness because I had to enjoy my great deed, and prostrate
myself before it. (far away you can hear the sound of a hunting horn)
MIIS
POGANY : (rarely) Yes, Costache, the
artist must be wise in front of his work. Lack of wisdom unbalances most of
them. I saw a poet in the French provincial town who lost his mind before a
poetry book. (short pause) Others change otherwise. You have remained the same,
Costache. An Oltenian peasant, the carver, who confuses art with earth, with
the hill where he climbs to the top digging. (nightingales singing bursts in a
bush under the window)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: I have my difficult moments, of anguish, of pain, when I lose myself
before stone, sometimes I feel I am afraid, I am afraid of getting crazy, but I
get over it. (after a while) When I get over it, I feel well … But our word
diverts…from the halves that must become the whole, and when they become so, if
they stayed longer in this state, the
whole would perish … I mean if the whole stops for a moment, it perpetuates
life, and if it remained after that
moment, it would die. (Intrigued, scared) Why?
MIIS POGANY :
(dreamily) Do you realize that if man and woman hugged in the rut state,
and if they lost and couldn`t detach, they would die exhausted. Then they would die of
starvation, then would die of tiredness, then of thirst.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (thinking) That’s right … But that’s not what I`m thinking about.
It`s something else. Think of creation
and whole. Whole is not to blame, but part. Parts are so composed … This
is a drama. And then I do not understand how to do, how to carve the halves?
Halves are made to live as halves, not
as a whole.
MIIS
POGANY : Half is a half not because it
is a half, but because it lacks that condition to be the whole. At the same
time, this is a metaphor of nature, man lives only as a half, and not all as a
whole … For always missing the other half, for tending to something eternal.
That is why God made man, who is His half. (stops sadly) The moment he
becomes the whole, when he reaches the state of a whole, he disappears. What
does it mean ? So it happens to the genius.
Why can`t the whole survive? Because when it becomes a whole, it disappears
from another one, or it feels unnatural to God. (after a while living
enlighted)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: I think I found it. The moment it becomes the whole, it becomes One,
or One is only one from the beginning. There can`t be two Ones in the universe,
and then at the very same moment it dies, it splits in half. (forgetting Miss
Pogany)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (refreshed and happy at the same time) Hm, but what if it survived?
It, that would become one? It means that the other, the Great One becomes a
half. Wait! It, the Great One, becomes a half, because now it lacks something.
It lacks the two halves that have become One. Lacking something it is not the
whole, it becomes a half just in that moment. And he Great One collapses into
chaos. (after a few moments of deep reflection) Does the overthrow of
hourglass, the downfall into chaos of the universal Brain, its turning into
stellar material occurs because of what is happening? (after a while) Oh, God,
maybe I can clear up the hourglass
enigma, and the falling into chaos of the Great ALL! (screams of sea gulls
remove sadly)
MIIS
POGANY : Costache, Costache, you`ve
forgotten me …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (hearing nothing) And then it is a kind of a riot of the Small Whole
against the great All, of One agianst the great One. The Great One becames a
half at that moment. But it, the great One becoming half, can no more find its
half to regain One. Therefore, it will fall into chaos. (short pause) But why
only it, the Great One, can resist procreating, because the great One is an
eternal procreation, subject to it, its essence is an eternal
MIIS POGANY :
(which stoods like a ghost and goes away) Costache Costache, you`ve
forgotten me, Costache … You`re lost in your thoughts and in the mists of time
…
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (who has not heard her) Why does the Great All survive? (restlessly
wandering through his workshop.We can
hardly recognize him)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (screaming) Why does the Great All survive? (after a while falling on
his knees, quieter) But does the Great All, the universal Brain, falling into
chaos, becoming stellar matter, start procreating again? (after a while of
thinking)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (confused) If everything becomes Universal Brain, and its structures,
the infinity of its elements reach ideal positions, then the All, the Whole is
no longer capable of creation, it crumbles taking it from the beginning, from
the Star matter? (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : But is that brain, that being universal, is it a real being? I, a
tormented spirit, lost in the early period, between two twists of the
hourglass, who can I love more, the universal brain or the stellar matter? The
end or the beginning, the full hourglass or the empty hourglass? (after a long
moment of silence) Lord, my spirit is at the crossroad again I do not know
which way is right. Only my instinct or my intuition leads me! (after a few
moments of reflection) No, no! A genius is like a stretched elastic, he `s like
a ray springing up into darkness, he is not at a crossroad as I am. (keeps
silent. A silence that makes you hear the breaking sea waves.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (we can read despair on his face) So what am I, what is happening to
me in the world, in the universe, in the imensity of time? (short pause) Could
I ever solve the mystery that is torturing me ? (after a while) Am I
not a genius or have I gone beyond genius? (meditating) If I think thoroughly,
I must have passed this state. Genius is the state of an awful tending towards
the subject of poetry, towards to subject of discovery. Genius means
clairvoyance and tending. Genius is a terrible lightning which illuminates and
burns. But I am a shepherd in the mountains of Oltenia, going with a lamp in
hand … (sad, as if crying) but I’ve gone beyond genius. My genius was off, or
have I survive it? In cold areas where I entered and crossed, it would be out
as it really was. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Is that really? Is genius a
disease? As up to 3O years old I’ve been
sick! Creation disease, the illness, the pain to create … is it worse than the
disease of love? (bitter smile) I remember this disease of love. Disease of
woman is different, hey tigger each other. It`s the disease of the other half.
They are similar diseases, diseases of reunification. Diseases of the half
suffering from the other half! (silent)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: It has to be so … What else are my escapes… when I was a kid, then a
lad, I ran
away from
home … When I was child, my escpae to the dye house in Targu-Jiu, my escape to
Slatina and from there to Craiova…. And then my flight to the world. (deep
breath, as if he faints) Hadn`t I been a genius … I wouldn`t have run away. It
was that longing within me, but it was a
going through desert and at random. It was a going to the target I knew
there inside me. Thinking better, my childhood and youth resembles that of
Rimbaud, the child prodigy of poetry. (silent, mumbling) What could it be there
in the soul of thet being? Correspondence between soul and poetry is
indisputable, when the instinct of
poetry is awaken, it drags you as a stallion goes. (afflicted) Then when
clear-sightedness came to me, it was over. There were the brakes. The other
instinct, the instinct of preservation lit everything. It intuited the great
journey, what a hard mission I had to
accomplish, and then it stoped the burning and silence appeared…. And I knew
all my my life since its start. (silent moments)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: Look, I have never thought about it again. There is something else,
another being, above genius. (Muttering) I`ll write this in stone, too. The
self-preservation instinct of a genius is shaded and false, destroyed by
another instinct, instinct of knowledge, of creation, which drags him wildly.
(after a while) But where is this from, why does this happen? (thinking) From
there that the genius` view is a ray in the night of the universe … since the
sight of being that goes beyond genius,
is the sphere of everything, of
all … (frightened, tormented) My Goooood, how could I get to this truth?
Vision is the scope of the All. I can see everything, I can see the All. (after
a while) I think this comes from my homeland, the country and the land of my
people. (Surely, sadly) There must it come from, from the ground imbibed with
the soul and blood of our ancestors. (after a moment)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (the seagulls screaming can be heard very close, painfully) At first
everything was gurgling in me. The ray
of vision was gurgling. As the light of a candle would burn too strong and
would melt the poor candle too fast. (deep breath, groans, as if crying) That
earth, that earth which is culture, not stone or geological substance.
(groaning) Lord, when the plough tills in the Romanian realm, it plows into the
dense soul deposited with each dead, and was stamped down like the ground in porch. The Romanian peasant,
when he eats bread, he eats soul. And in
the beginning it was so much soul that it bubbled through me like the wind
bubbling through the flute. (remembering) I could die. That wind blows me away
like a snowflake. He blew me to Targu Jiu, to Craiova, and it guided me like a ship sailing to Paris. And here the great enlightment occured. (deep
breath) The sight, that ray came to an end, and dried on the shpere of the All
until it became itself a Sphere. Since then I
knew what and how I had to say. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : The self-preservation instinct is like a lamp with deep roots in the
ancestral land, from where it is fed and its light comes from. (after a while)
That kept me strongly, supported me … That should keep me alive up until I show
all. I say all. I put it in stone. (tired) It stopped tuberculosis. And it
controlled my burning. Only then I haven`t been destroyed. Because the
enlightement was there, in the earth, that is in the soul which has become
earth. It was so much in it that it couldn`t be
said in a thousand years. (On the hills around the bells of a herd are
heard. The sculptor seems to listen to them) The Romanian spiritual space…
there are too many things to be told or to be sung. It was therefore written in
the stars for me to give everything not in an instant, but in a life. And to
give the Whole, it means the Sphere. Have I managed to give the Sphere? (after
some moments of thinking)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (a vernal murmur of a mountain
spring) Have I managed to include the Whole, I mean, does my work is part of
the Sphere or is it drawing the Sphere? It would have to be close to the
Sphere. And the Sphere woudn`t have been closed, because everything in it would
go mad, would reach the condition of perfection , and would fall into chaos.
(breathing hard) The work items that are halves, would gather, or would gather
into a whole, which is the same, then would fall into chaos. That would be
terrible, because everything is part of a fall … They are lost now
(tragically). I shudder at this thing. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (his sweaty face is clearing up slightly) Lord! Is it true?? It can`t
be true … (gets scared) No, no, (getting frightened) it can`t be true …! The
hourglass has a long way to fill up, and it`s not about a universal brain. No,
no way! (shaking, very scared) Then it must be destroyed! (screams) To destroy,
destroy! (looks like a demented, beard flying in the wind, his eyes gleam
wildly, sweat ran down his face, gets quickly
a hammer and smash some works at the height of dementia. He turns one
work into pieces. After breaking it, he watches the remainder one. He has a
wheezing breath. Then he calms down slowly)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (exhausted, lost) Now there’s no Sphere. No longer One. The Great One
is no longer in danger. ( takes the pieces in his hands)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (crying) I can`t recognize it!. What statue was it? Shouldn`t I have
broken the best one? The Endless Column must be the greatest work. It’s there far away in that miserable
burg. On the pasture where the horses
graze. (short pause) I see horses
tethered by the endless column. (his hand stretched, as if he can see them) I
see horses tethered by the Endless Column! What terrible metaphor can it
be? (covering his eyes with his hand)
No, I won`t see it, it`s too much for a human mind! (looking out of the window,
far away) Now I am satisfied. Oh, God!
Even though I lost a piece of work, I saved the great One. If these stones
gathered together and formed the All,
the Whole , it means that One, and if
that One survived the instant, then the great One would became a half.
(choking, coughs) It would have been a crime, a huge sacrilege. No, I was not
allowed to challenge the great One to fall into chaos. To start from
nothing, ie from the stellar matter …
(after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : But am I sure that everything
is going right? Is the rise and fall into chaos of the Universe really true?
(after a while) My Lord, be there! Show You to me for an instant , to have
someone to talk to! (take a few moments) But if it is not so? And I ruined my
work for nothing? (reconciled) I`d better be sure. Be quiet. (short pause) What
a huge thing, being quiet, serene in the universe! (turns back. Notices that
Miss Pogany is missing) Where are you? (Fast flashing eyes, you can see that
he`s desperate) Where are you? (fast breathes, panting) You gone? (looks scared
and surprised at the same time) Maybe she was never real … It was just her
memory, just an illusion, a fancy … (silence for a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (peaceful) I`m glad you`ve come. I was missing the woman … It did me
good … I calmed down. And my thought is far away in time. It’s like a thin smoke
of cigarette out of people in a long way in the universe … And now people can`t
be see, they are alone. I`m threatened by the danger of extinction, and
wasting… (after a while) I`m serene… And old … Should I stay serene before time
and universe …. Was she a real person? (thinking) I’m afraid not to long for
her some day and scream in pain … (wiping sweat) I am better now …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (suddenly worried) Why am I better? I missed my Mom … I dreamed about
her, and I `m ok now. (Sad) What’s my Mum doing there , far away … in the small
village with houses made of beams? I always hear you, mother, living in the
world. (careful, suddenly frightened) What is this? There is no longing, no
hurt, no pain, there’s no joy or melancholy … it seems melancholy, but it is a
longing for something also. As if I am air or wind and I would scatter or
dissipate myself to you, Mom …. and to
you, beloved woman. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (the fountain squeak sounds like in Hobiţa) Oh Lord, I understand what
it is …. With my mom I`m connected with the world, with the ground, I`m linked to
our ancestors, to history. (he is
ready to burst into tears, an old man
tormented by visions) People come behind me advancing to the the silver
horizon, illuminated by an unseen sunrise, and they are coming very slowly, and
I went too far in the depths of the desert … and my link with the world,
with man, is in danger, and then that
wind starts to blow which is longing for my Mom…. (he`s really crying now) and
my heart feels, and my soul bends of its deep pain. (after a few moments). You
would be so longing for me, Mom, that you can`t bear it anymore. You would be
so longing for me that you would feel your flesh as black as coal. And you
would like me sitting close to you,
seeing me, who knows, maybe you haven`t got much time, and you want to see me.
(his voice
and hands are shaking). I see, I see what’s in your mind. Oh Lord, forgive me!
(it takes a few moments) And in a short
time I will go there, too, Mom. We`ll meet there, we`ll meet like two
companions. (takes his temples in his hands) God, my mom’s dead long ago, and
she will always be my mother. (screaming in pain) Why do we die? I fought
against death … I fought against it, I know. (silence) With my art and my genius!
( the screams of the sea gulls sound more and more loudly, tragically)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I am guilty that I fought alone? Sure! But what could I do?! So far
in history we couldn`t fight against death but this way, with artistic work.
Through art. Poets and artists are the ones who stood against death, and they
still alive on time. They are the only living beings in history, their spirit
always accompanies us. (short pause) After my carcass will be entirely lost, my
spirit will accompany mankind for thousands of years, will accompany it up to
the overthrow of the hourglass, then it`ll
end too and will become stellar matter … Maybr it won`t be, the
hourglass won`t overturn … (after a while) God, it hurts me this immortality!
I’m happy for it but it hurts me too! I seem missing something, and I don`t
know why. But did the poets, painters and sculptors do? (silent suddenly) Death
was defeated … What they did is that they only aroused that longing for with
the immortality of their works, the seed of eternity that lies in the human
unconscious, in the depths of man … And they showed people what is possible.
You, people, are works of nature and of history, greater than some books, or
only my statues and much more they should be immortal. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I am guilty that I fought alone? Sure! But what could I do?! So far
in history we couldn`t fight against death but this way, with artistic work.
Through art. Poets and artists are the ones who stood against death, and they
are still resisting in time. They are the only living beings in history, their
spirit always accompanies us. (short pause) After my carcass will be entirely
lost, my spirit will accompany mankind for thousands of years, will accompany
it up to the overthrow of the hourglass, then it will end, too and will become
stellar matter … Maybe it won`t be so, the hourglass won`t overturn … (after a
while) God, this immortality hurts me !
I’m happy for it but it hurts me, too! I seem to long for something but I don`t
know for what. But what did the poets, painters and sculptors do? (silent
suddenly) Death wasn`t defeated … What they did is that they only aroused that
longing with the immortality of their works, the seed of eternity that lies in
the human unconscious, in the depths of man … And they showed people what is
possible. You, people, are works of nature and of history, greater than some
books, or than my statues and much more you should be immortal. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : After artists will come scientists,
doctors, chemists, physicists, biologists, and they will fight against death.
The second attack will be decisive, and
people will live hundreds of years and thousands of years. (smiling sadly) Oh,
Lord, if man lived a thousand years, I
would feel different now, as if I would have thousands of years of creation
ahead, and how much could I do and could tell the Man…. (refreshed) I`d rush
the Man into reaching the point where the hourglass fills, I`d move beyond …
The hourglass would start to grow, grow to infinity. (silent again) So it
should happen, I have to go back and become dead matter. I leave satisfied … I
can say that I have done my duty. Look, you’ve gone and I didn`t say that to
you… And maybe this doesn`t even cross your mind …(the song of a cock sounds
faintly at night) You must be happy, Mom … Of all mothers that have been
through this history, you have done your duty as a few people have done it … As
a few mothers have done it. Because you gave birth to a child who carried the
world’s torch on, who did so much for humanity, for its benevolence… (after a
while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (lighting his face as a child) Oh, how happy must you be…. All
mothers from the beginning of the world that have given birth to great sons and
daughters, who led the world on … (groaning in pain) What beings must be you …
I see you in the world beyond, on smooth and lit lands, how you go happily,
with faces shining with joy. The joy of being given great creators to the
history, how you go on the ancient hills
of the world beyond, go beyond the ancient world, and what light is, and how
beautiful it is out on the hills, and you go on walking on the hills of heaven
… God chose you all …. And I see among my Mom you. You seem a little scared,
Mom … but you’re happy. (such as crying) Now I know you’re happy, mother, and I
was that, Costache,your child, who ran away from home … and you trembled for
his life … (after a while. Raising his face and watching in the distance, as if
waking from a dream)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (lighting his face as a child) Oh, how happy must you be…. All
mothers from the beginning of the world who have given birth to great sons and
daughters, who led the world forward … (groaning in pain) What beings must be
you … I see you in the world beyond, on smooth and lit lands, how you go
happily, with faces shining with joy. The joy of being given great creators to
the history, how you go on the ancient
hills of the world beyond, and what a light is, and how beautiful it is out on
the hills, and you go on walking on the hills of heaven … God has chosen you
all …. And I see my Mom among you. You seem a little scared, Mom … but you’re
happy. (as if crying) Now I know you’re happy, mother, and I was that, your
Costache, your child, who ran away from home … and you trembled for his life …
(after a while. Raising his face and watching in the distance, as if waking
from a dream)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (thoroughly wet with perspiration) My God, what a dream!? It seems a
beautiful dream! (panting) I`was longing for my mother, that longing for her
was badly torturing me and now I saw
her… she was on some hills full of light, smelling like quince, and she was
happy. (a few moments)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (he’s very lonely) I’m happy, Mom. Maybe it is better that I wasn`t
with you, because you would impeded me. Since I left my native home, I was a
soldier fighting in the wilderness, away, with the unseen and the unheard. (looking ahead like a blind) I’ve left them
all, mother, pleasures and all, to be alone and lucid, powerful, there, before
the infinite and the unknown. As the soldier standing in the battle field,
facing the enemy`s guns, I stood alone
for decades, bare-chested, in front of
the infinite. It was tough for me, mother, so hard, I couldn`t tell
(small pause) How to describe something that can not be captured in words? It
was as if I had been skinned and stayed in a strong wind that blows in the
universe, from the unknown … and cold. And that burning sensation, but full of
happiness! What a sharp harsh happiness,
was my life, Mom! (after a while) Let`s be happy and proud that we are happy,
Mom! Both, and this connects us. We are the ones of the few happy people who
have appeared here and have been here, on this planet since the beginning of
all beginnings. (then, as if waking. Somewhere a dog howls) Lord, what`s the
matter with me? (suddenly scared) My attention is too loose, and I am overcome,
overpowered by a kind of sleep and memory. Could it be more?
S C E N E I I I
The same
setting as in the previous scenes. Brancusi is lying on the bed. His breathing
is heavy, his forehead glitters, yellow and aging, full of sweat. They seem to
be the last moments of the artist. The sea waves sound empty, hitting the
rocks. From time to time the screams of the sea gulls tear the air.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (groaning) Moooother, answer me … (cough suddenly choking him. After
having been quieter) It seems to be the same thing if I die, or I don`t die.
How strange … Is it the same thing? I`ve
never thought to get here, and yet here I am. (after a while) Is it good
or bad? In general it is not good that man should be here … I tell it on my
deathbed…with my last words… But I shouldn`t get here … I’ve done my job. I
have done my duty … Maybe I feel something … It`s not a longing, it’s slighter
than a longing, , it`s something hard to describe (his body shrinks, raised his
head, looking at something that would approach from heaven. He`s watching
carefully .He’s a little scared.)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : A pigeon! I wonder where is it from? (short pause) It must be a sign.
If it`s the pigeon, it means it`s good … (you can hear the waves crashing to
shore)
VOICE: Don`t
rejoice, Costache, don`t do it. I
haven`t come to take you, but to judge
you.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (his eyes opened large, he’s
scared) Speak! You seem to be my father’s voice! (wipes sweat from his
forehead) To judge me? Who are you?
VOICE:
(distant echo) I am the face o fLord and His spirit is in me… And I came to
judge you
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (his eyes unnaturally large) Come to judge me? But haven`t I judged
myself all my life … And there’s another judge, much harsher and more ruthless
than me, it`s my work. (he`s exhausted, speaking hard) Doesn`t it judge me all
the time? And wasn`t there another judge who has judged me? History. (you can
hear the sad sea waves crashing to shore) For many years I have lived as if I
were in the trial … I worked, I ate, I loved, I suffered, I was standing right
in front of the eye of judge… that is life … For this is the life of an artist,
and of an awareness as me … it’s always in the judgment … (takes a while,
tired) Look, maybe that’s why I forgot your judgment … If You have to judge me
and I`ve forgotten , please forgive me, Lord! (exhausted, falls on his back)
VOICE: Yes,
I have to judge you.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Have I done anything wrong?
VOICE:
You’re wrong. But it’s not that. You know it’s no soul without being judged.
This is the essence of spirit. He judges and is judged.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (rising on his elbows with great difficulty) Okay, Lord, if it is so…
I`m so quiet now … I was scared when I heard you are here … For judgment I
shouldn`t fear …
VOICE:
You’re wrong, Costache. Eternally we have to be afraid of judgment.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : No, Lord, I mean that man shouldn`t get afraid of judgment.
VOICE:
(threatening) Are you defying me?
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (scared) No, no, my Lord, not at all. This means that I feel
peaceful… I’m humble and I think I did my duty … I have done my duty, Lord!
VOICE: You
haven`t done it, Costache …
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI : Why, Lord? Show me …
VOICE:
You`ve forgotten your debts as a man, for giving everything to your genius …
You took from the man and gave to the genius …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : That’s right, God … But if I hadn`t done that, I wouldn`t have done
many things, I wouldn`t have been where I am, and I wouldn`t have done what I
did.
VOICE: (as
thinking) You may be right … I have to be good to you … But one thing … I
cann`t forgive you, Costache … The children … You had no children .
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (exhausted, falling down) But I was right not to have children, God …
The genius has this right… For he is entitled to do for mankind more than those
who have children.
VOCEA : Nu,
Costache, n-ai dreptate… Acest drept nu-l are nimeni… Geniul nu are voie să
ucidă. Şi dacă nu are dreptul să ucidă,
el nu are dreptul nici să nu facă copii… lucrul asemenea cu pruncul…
VOICE: No,
Costache, you’re wrong … Nobody has this right… The Genius is not allowed to
kill. And if he has no right to kill, he
has no right also to have no children……
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (tries to smile, actually wandering in his mind) Yes, Lord, it is so.
I recognize. My mind is enlightened and I see that it’s so… Forgive me, Lord,
I’m asking for lessening my punishment … But Ive believed all my life, and then there have been circumstances
…
VOICE:
(taking pity on him) Well,. Costache …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : What should I do, Lord … It’s too late now. I did something else
instead
VOICE: You
did, but it’s not the same. The first duty of human beings is to go life
further. It is incumbent upon every living creature left by Me. But you didn`t
bring life into the world.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (sad) Somehow I did, God.
VOICE: This
isn`t life, Costache. We deceive us, but this isn`t life. Human bodies are
linked, they hold their hands, all holding hands with his father and his son,
and so as if they were forests on an endless plain… endless strings of people
holding hands come from deep time. (sighing slightly) and sin passes through
them, coming from the beginning. Original sin, it`s as current flows through
the wire, and on the last one in the string, it will stop … you are the last
one, Costache. While the adjacent rows of people will continue to go on
forever. (short pause) But yours will stay somewhere, while others are going
further into the infinity of time.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (he looks better now) Yes, Lord, I sacrificed myself to give them my
power, to go with it further, and to win. And in my haste I bore my soul and all my strength and I gave it to
them to show them the way and give them strength to go on, and You does blame
me.
VOICE:
Strings of people are infinite columns, Costache, so they go to infinity, only
your family, your way stopped. That’s why you did the endless column.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (listening, rarely) Yes, Lord, that’s right … But I’m the one, God,
who has given more, and now, it`s me who
is the poorest, on whom Your punishment falls on… This judgment is not
fair, Lord. I think that I should be rewarded, not blamed …
VOICE:
Somehow you are right, too,Costache, but you broke the first law of
preservation and procreation … Genius is allowed to do anything but not to kill
nor procreate. When his creation is not creation of life, it`s a kind of
humiliation of creation. But when his genius would be so great, after having
carved statue, to give life to it, to pick it
up from night, as Orpheus did, he, the greatest of all artists of the
world. He is alone. He is the only one among people who saved himself and came out on the surface, while others
will have remained underground, in the dark, as Dostoevsky said, whom I think
you`ve heard about…..
CONSTANTN
BRANCUSI : (sad, lost) Yes, Lord, I have …
VOICE: Has
one of your statues come alive, has it walked in the world, and has it also
given life?
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (sad) No, God …
VOICE:
(bewailing him) Well, Costache you`re wrong in front of me …
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI : Yes, Lord … it`s true. But I`m not
guilty. But You have to reward me. I
believe in my work and my toil, but I also doubt it, and you come and say that
I did what I did. And You punish me as I hadn`t done anything. (groaning) It’s
not fair, God … (screams of sea gulls sound amazingly close)
VOICE: Say,
man …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (sad) I admit, O Lord, that I am guilty. But I can`t admit that I was
wrong. And if I`m guilty it`s because You left no chance to the human being to
save himself from blame. Guilty of being human. (a bullock cart is moving on
the road) But I`m not wrong, God … For if I had made my statues not of stone,
but had made them alive, I wonder, would they live longer, would they resist for thousands and thousands of years,
as I did them? (listening with strained ears) Or, if by my talent, that’s which
is Your gift Heavenly Father, I had given them life, would they have been
faithful to my thoughts? Would they have kept the expression and idea that I
put in them? (after a while) No, Lord! By the
internal laws of life, they would have changed, losing what I put in
them, the soul, the fear, my dreams, anxiety, hope … (groaning) And then my
work would have been useless. Today I couldn`t stand before you and I could
never say before Thee that I have fulfilled my duty.
VOICE:
(after a long time, sad) You’re right, Costache …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (heavy-hearted) You see, my God …
VOICE: But
it would have been better to give them life and make them fulfill their mission
that the creators gave them. I mean the one I gave you … (we can hear the bells
of a church as coming beyond the world )
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (seems stuck, anxious, his
face is yellow) It would be good, my God, but You see, here You are at fault.
Because You put in me too little power. And less in the common people… You
couldn`t put in me, as a man, more power, and therefore no man can. (sad) So You see, You are guilty, my Lord.
VOICE: It
isn`t good, Costache …your thought is too arrogant …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (meditating, sad, as being in
another world) It`s not, my Lord … I
only tell the truth. Many times in life I cursed You for the world and
conditions You’ve created me in. You put
a cross too heavy on my shoulders, and in a too heinous world … And with little and nothing,
by my labor, I created a work that will remain, and I gave light to people for
enlightening their minds and lives. ( stops exhaustedly) While You, my Lord,
you gave dark and you gave people the fear of Thee, to follow and worship You
fearfully …
VOICE: (
anger is felt in His voice) Bend your head in the ground, Costache, and
humiliate yourself …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : No, Lord, because all my life was humiliation, You humiliated me all
my life and my ascension is due only to my labor and I want my night to be a
rise against You. (you can hear the bells of a church from another world, then
sea waves hitting the shore)
VOICE: Silly
man! Don`t you know that death is a prejudice! An illusion! If a man dies and
deserves to die, this means that he raelly deserves to die. Have you ever
thought about this? From the moment when the human being won`t die in history,
you have to know that it worked hard and rose so much that it deserves to be
immortal. I therefore judge you by death …
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI: (sad, bitterly) You also judge Thee, O Lord. For what dies is my body
of clay which is Your work. So You’re judging yourself, too, that you weren`t able to create an eternal
man. So the death of humans, of their bodies of flesh, is Your judgment, Lord …
My works are going to be immortal and their eternity is my judgment. See, Lord?
that you’re inferior? (Coughs a few times) I have succeeded in my toil to rise
above You …
VOICE:
You`ve lost your faith, Costache and your fear of God … And with them, you’ve
lost your minds.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I haven`t lost my faith, Lord. For I have faith that rules my life,
but man had to raise another faith better and more just. I haven`t lost my fear
but once man won`t be afraid in history and in universe.
VOICE:
Another accusation against you, Costache, is that you have left your mother.
CONSTANTIN
BRANCUSI : Yes, Lord, you’re right. But I`ve paid for it. I paid a
thousandfold. I paid with longing and pain for her. I couldn`t get her here,
which would have meant to take her out of her world. And where I left her, she
wasn`t reduced to beggary, but she was among her relatives, that could give her
anything except her son. (a dog is howling in the depth of night)
VOICE: It is
you who had had to give it to her… Therefore I blame you and punish you.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I couldn`t, Lord. In front of
the stone to be carved, I has been a soldier going to war, fighting
against enemies.(deep breath, as if he would choke) My battle was beyond
compare and I couldn`t hit ten times with the sword, then come back, kiss my
wife and caress my children or put my head in my mother’s lap (lamenting) I
haven`t had time in my toil, my God, that`s why I had with all the longing,
which devoured me and the pain that
burned me, to endure everything, to toil there away of my people, in the
deserts of creation and of spirit. (trying to get up) It`s You who is guilty,
Lord, for You could help me, but You didn`t help me, and hit me more with pain
and injustice! You`ve made me toil for a piece of bread, when you had had to
help me!
VOICE:
(sound of a hunting horn is lost in the air)
You`re right a bit, Costache.
Another charge is that you left the
country, you know what humble your country is, it needed so much your arm and your mind.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (outraged, with his last
power) Again You aren`t right, Lord. I loved my country and my mother as the
eyes of my head, and I am away from them now, at the moment I`m passing away. Just because I loved my
country, O Lord, and at this point I also accuse You just because I loved my
country more than You did, because You gave it only wars and disasters.
(coughing bout) That’s why, Lord, I had to leave it, as You say, but I didn`t
abandon it, I took it to the world. When my chest arrived at the border, I got
the border to my chest like a rubber band and harnessed to it, so I hiked with
it in the world as far as possible. Or, as the poet says, I presented my country
to the world and I poured it out into the universe. (short pause) If I had
stayed in my country, in my village, either in Bucharest or in Craiova, I
wouldn`t have been able to do anything, because You took care that I couldn`t
find anything that I needed.. To do what I did for my country, I had to go
elsewhere to learn, to learn what I didn`t know, to get to the center of the
world, where there were minds to see and appreciate my work. Even if I had
stayed in my country and had lifted up the work I did, it would have
passed at least another century to come
to be known worldwide. (deep breath) Instead my work was known immediately, and
through it, through my work, my people was known, its myths and the legends of the place I came from. (sea waves can be
heard very clearly neraby now)
VOICE:
You’re right, Costache. You’ve done your duty, but you’re still guilty.
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Yes, Lord … (wakes up. Glassy eyes wide open. Having one foot in the
grave) I talked on my own, my depth of my self spoke with me, my unconscience
talked to my conscious. (Complaining)
I’m sorry … I feel guilty. Why would I feel guilty? … For I know I did my duty
as a man and an artist. (his lips are dry. Eyes looking up) Lord, I`m dying
alone, as I lived all my lifetime. I would deserve someone to bring me a cup of
water at least. (Loudly) Ioana, Ioana, where are you? Your children are adults.
I should have had a child of my own, too.
(silent. His eyes are looking anxiously)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I am so sorry, Lord! As if I would longing for something! (after a
while) Longing for what? Maybe it`s not a longing. What is it? It’s a kind of
nostalgia. What would I miss? (closes his eyes for a while. Then he opens them
widely and lucidly) To long for this world? Yes, I do, I miss it, where there
is all the history, where I stayed as
the bud sitting on the top of the branch (after a few moments when his
eyes are looking at the ceiling) But it`s not only that. (shouting desperately)
My God, this longing is doubled, it`s longing and nostalgia, I can see it cleary now. Yes, That`s it. (after a while)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : What am I longing for universe and future, Oh, God, what a deep and
silent longing, like a black spring that gives content to my being. I`m yearning for time, I`m yearning for what I could do as an artist, if I were an eternal
being. (panting exhausted) I`m so
yearning for the things I will never do! (a few minutes later) I was, Lord. That’s
why I feel guilty. I feel guilty. What is this feeling that I`m living now? How
can I call it if not a deep longing?
It`s such a strange and deep feeling. (a few minutes later) Could it be the feeling that I won`t be able
to work again? My arm won`t be able to move and strike the stone again. Stone,
which is billions of years … In the stone … in it which is billions of years, I
see the empty forms of my future works that my hands had to carve. I can see
them as if they are made of lines. How dreamy are they thinking of something,
something far away, waiting. (silent)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (long silence) They`re waiting
for me. And I’ll never come again. How couldn`t I feel guilty? Oh, Lord!
(staring as if he wants something) That means that my works do not gather in a
whole. (terror on his face) I had to realize that human work does never gather
in a whole. Man is a too small bit to do
it. (rarely, regretfully) I`ve split my work for nothing. Which sculpture have
I broken? And when was that? (silent)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : What am I longing for it, Lord! It’s like a river that flows through
me. What a nostalgia for my people! (Crying) I`d love to die at home … I want
to die on the hills of Gorj. (loudly, plaintively) Lord, hear me … Don`t let me
die, to have time to get to my country, to my family! (trying to rise. The death
sweat is runny on his yellow skin, wrinkled and old. Falls back, exhausted.
Turns his face to wall)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : Oh God, I need to scream! That’s why I felt guilty and did not know
why. My Goooood, what are you going to
do with me? What did you do to me, Lord? (screaming in pain) With meeeee! (As
if mourning) With meeeeee! (the songs of cocks rise above the village, seeming
from another world)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I should have gone home for dying, I thought about it, I had it in my
mind, to go home and carve the mountains. The idea came to me long time ago,
when I was young and believed in my abilities and power to finish my task.
(after a few moments. Actually talking to himself) Not to carve all of them.
Perhaps it wouldn`t have been well. Yeah, but some mountains I should have
carved to my country. At least one. I
thought of the peak of Glodeanu Mountain, I saw its design in my mind … I wouldn`t
have needed more than 500 workers for two years, and it would have been a
miracle. (cough chokes him) It would have been something that nobody could ever
and anywhere do in the world. Much more famous and greater than the Sphinx. It
would have been preserved over millennia or millions of years. It seems that I
glimpse the sculpture blunted by winds
and rains. (his voice goes slowly and slowly) It will appear to those who will
live in those lands, if humanity wouldn`t spread over… in the universe, to those who will go back to our lands
from time to time. … It would be the work of nature , and of millions of
years. (recovered. Now he`s just happy remembering his youth project and the
images of his native mountains.)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I would have done my country the best known in the world. As many
people in the world have crowded to see the wonders of Egypt, so they would
have been overflowed upon the Parang area. (satisfied) Hee, hee, hee, I would
have earned good money for my country, as
Jerusalem did. I am so sorry, Lord … But most guilty are You, the one
who gave me no power. Who took my powers although artists like me supposed to
be born eternal. To be born immortal, Lord, to give as much as possible to
people, to their peers. (is thinking for a few minutes) I would have carved the
history of the Romanian people in the Gorj mountains. How wonderful it would
have been! (after a moment) Or I would have sculptured the history of the world
since its beginnings. (short pause) Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee! The history of the
world from the beginning. The history of the world in metaphors. Or worse,
Lord, give me life again! (believes what he says, trying to get up) Give me life,
O Lord to live again! I would have carved the future history of the world and
mankind. I would have shown the people the true way, the true star to be led
by. (tired, deep breath) Man is still an animal and a poor being, and a beast.
He could kill himself again, as he did in World War II, when many people were
killed by minds that controlled them. (the faint sound of a horn is lost in the
distance)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : The most guilty for world`s destiny are the leaders of nations. They
are the great killers of mankind. (deep breath,) How can I tell, man should be
unforgiving with those who do not do their duty towards man and rowards
progress since the world`s beginnings , and they won`t do it for a long time.
(frown forehead , cold stare) There are a few who try to do their duty, and they are very sad
because they can`t do anything else
impeded by ohers. (animated, spirited) Maybe I have never had so much to say to
mankind and peoples, as I have at this moment when I die. (after a moment) I
think I`ve recovered a bit. I feel energy inside me again, how it comes, just gurgling, like the
water in the fountain … (Deep breath, sigh)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI (talking to himself) How many
times haven`t I been knocked to the ground, and I`ve always risen up to my feet. (sits up.
His sweat is running down his forehead,
his cheeks. Some staggering steps around the workshop)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (the horn of an ambulance is
heard. The sculptor seems to listen) I think I can work now also. (takes a
chisel in his hand. He feels the rock) Great powers have been placed within me.
That land I come from cast within me
great energies and powers in the full sense of the word. It gave me and
created me as a mother. Because it had more in it to say, and it needed a great
artist to express it. I did a lot for my people and I am glad for that, but I
feel guilty that I couldn`t do everything and I`m deeply indebted to it. (silent several minutes, the air vibrates by
the screams of the leaving storss)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (sighing) How much I`m indebted to it! I can really be someone … but I’m not sure.
No matter how much you give to a land, it will never be enough. (silence again)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : (unnaturally wide-eyed, looking ahead) I can see this very clearly.
And I see this very clearly that when an artist dies, he dies guilty. The
artist dying, even he`s a genius, he dies guilty. (thinks for a while) In fact,
if I think well, I’ve always worked hard as if I were guilty of something, and
I wanted my labour to get rid of this guilt. (take a stone and strokes it. He
sits on a stool in front of the torso. Outside, as if coming dawn, we hear the
song of nightingales)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : To put this in stone. (after a few
chisel chops, he stops.) I have so much to say that I can`t start
anything. Many will say that I haven`t worked anything from a certain moment of
my life, that I have nothing to say, but the truth is the opposite. (he coughs
a few times) I can`t work anymore, because I have so much to say, that I want to say everything at once, and it can`t
be done. (tired) And to say them one by one, I don`t have patience, because I
know that time does not wait for me, and it seems superfluous to say one word
when you can not speak the whole sentence. When you can not say everything you
have to say. (after a moment of thought)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : I think this is the drama of
an artist. He has more and more to say. So there comes a moment when, realizing
that physically is not immortal, for
being able to say whatever he has to say … after he thinks he has said
something in his life, he gives up to
say what he had to say. And silence … (he thinks, smiling to himself)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : It`s painful and great this moment. When he gives up. I think this is
one of the highest human greatness. Maybe I vaguely felt this when I first
heard Mioriţa. (he`s thinking) Yes, I remember well, this feeling was lived by
the shepherd in Mioritza. (silence for a while) How many people can understand
it? I think you have to live it to notice and understand it. (sad, exhausted)
Well, only now I do understand it, after a lifetime. (silence for a while, as
if he listens) Many people will pass away, generations, as gently as leaves
shed and the grass withers. Then it will
come a time when people won`t die. And nobody, billions of years uo to the
overthrow of the hourglass, if it ever topples, won`t live this deep and hard
feeling of overabundance. (listens) Oh, God, what a feeling, what a terrible
and great state! (after a while) A lifetime would deserve to be wasted for nothing but to live this feeeling. (thinks
a bit)
CONSTANTIN
BANCUSI : But if this state was given to me as a reward for my life of toil and
harshness? And for all I’ve done for mankind? (silence) This must be bliss …
The great and true happiness. (short pause) Now it`s an afflicted light, pain
and celebration of your flash, of your substance, then it`s a painful crying,
so sweet and bitter! (he stops, his face becomes worried) But if it was given
to me to be taken away?
(Barely
breath) Was it given to me for being
peaceful and quiet? (bitter smile) It’s like death would blindfold me,
to take me away. (after a while. His face expression is full of mercy) I feel
like Prometheus on a hilltop in the wind of time, although my body is a rag …
You can stay in this state for thousands of years! I believe now forever, the
enlightened conscience, this is the human beings mission. (low voice) Man will
become immortal by creation and lucidity. (praying) My God, let my mind be
awaken in this condition. Petrify me like this forever …
(As God
would have heard him, he remains hardened in this position, looking away with
open eyes. Sea waves sound louder hitting the rocks. The screams of seagulls
resound clearly, heartbreaking, growing louder and louder, as being closer and
closer)
T H E E N D
STEFAN DUMITRESCU
BIOGRAPHICAL ITINERARY
ŞTEFAN DUMITRESCU. ITINERAR BIOGRAFIC
The writer and playwright Stefan
Dumitrescu was born in the mid twentieth century, on April 24, 1950 (the same
day as Schiller, Theodor Palady, the Russian writer Nabocov, close to
Shachespeare’s birthday, April 23 – a sign that this sign of the zodiac is
great for literature, for culture) in Valea Mare, southern Valcea county.
Since the early years he was fascinated by fairy tales. Astonished, his
lady teacher said one day :”You`ll become a narrator as great as Ion Creanga”,
and asked him to tell fairy tales to the kindergarten kids. This made him very
happy and gave him courage and confidence. He liked to read, reading being the
great gift of God and his great joy, he read a lot. At school, at high school,
at univesity he used to read under the desk during the classes. All his life he
has been thirsty for knowledge, for creation, for getting answers to the great problems of human
existence. Like all the children of his age he attended the compulsory school,
then the high school. He wrote his first poems when he was 9 years old, after
the manner of George Cosbuc, the poet whom he loved enormously and later
struggled to rid himself of Cosbuc`s influence.
Attended the Faculty of
Philosophy in Bucharest, between 1969-1973. His dream was to become a
journalist after graduating, a great journalist like Eminescu, Goga, Pamfil
Şeicaru (the last one is a character in his novel „Delirium”, Volume II,
published in 2004 by Fortuna Publishing House, a sequel of Marin Preda`s novel
„Delirium”, Volume I). The dream will come true partly because during the
communism age he will contribute in almost all the cultural magazines of the time. And in the
current situation, when press has become commercial and full of tabloids, when
nobody cares for the country, for our historic destiny, it was impossible for
him to find a publication to work as a great journalist.
He was published for the first time
when he was 17, in 1967, under a pseudonym, when he was attending the high
school, encouraged by the poet Miron Radu Paraschivescu, writing him in a warm
letter of encouragement: „If you go on this road, my dear, you will go a greast
way.”
In October 1969, successive debut
with poetry both on radio Grozăveşti, the radio station in Grozăveşti, a
students` hostels complex where he lived, and on Radio Bucharest.
On 1 January 1970 Blandiana published
some of his poems (another debut) in the Contemporanul l(Contemporary )Review,
highly praising him at the heading The
Golden Lyre
1970, 1973 Stefan Dumitrescu
published in magazines like : Amfiteatrul, Luceafărul, România literară,
Contemporanul, revista Argeş ( Amphitheatre, The Morning Star, Literary
Romania, Contemporary, Arges Magazine )
Some poetic is moments on Radio
Bucharest.
In Contemporanul / Contemporary
Magazine he debuted as a historian and literary critic with literary reviews
and articles. The literary critic George
Ivascu, director of Contemporary Magazine would have wanted Stefan dumitrescu
to be an editor for Contemporanul /
Comtemporary after his graduation.
In
Amphitheater” Review, no. 12, 1971, Ana Blandiana presented Stefan
Dumitrescu to the public in a brilliant
way:
„A country with cosmic valleys in which birds
blossom, whose sky is sustained by the choir of virgins, whose flags are the
souls of ancestors gone to battle, a hallucinating country, a land full of
songs and blinded by the light, is glorified by Stefan Dumitrescu in his recent
lyrics, a strange poet, with his soul released risky, bridge over the liric
gap, whose shore beyond can`t be known.
I say that this launch is courageous and risky because it occurs outside
the well-worn roads of poetry, because
Stefan Dumitrescu both versifies beautifully and with much talent in a known or
surmised lyricism but he creates his own
frames, his own reference systems. Each
of his poems is an opening into a world created by himself, a world in which
birds walk armed and sing in the ruins of the flutes. Talent beyond any doubt,
restless and constantly burning, author of essays reinterpreting myths and of
poems rebuilding the universe, Stefan Dumitrescu is a tougher, more steeply,
more subdued to suffering and anguish than the
clear Dan Verona, but equally certain and True.”
Ana Blandiana, „Amphitheater” Review,
no. 12, 1971.
In the spring of 1973, the poet
Adrian Paunescu, recently became chief editor at Flacara / The Flame Magazine,
said to Stefan Dumitrescu that he planed to open the Flame Literary Circle /
Cenaclul Flacara and invited Stefan Dumitrescu to read some of his poems at the
first meeting of the Flame Literary Circle „Because I want very much to open
this cenacle with a great future writer, dear Stefan „. At the first meeting of
the Flame Literary Circle, the poet Stefan Dumitrescu read an entire volume of
poetry entitled „Nicolae Labiş – a cosmogonic portrait”. His poetry deeply
impressed the audience. amount of room.
Ciculescu Serban said that he would watch Stefan Dumitrescu withall his
attentioin. On this occasion Adrian Paunescu said about Stefan Dumitrescu
„Stefan Dumitrescu is a chance the literature. Stefan Dumitrescu is a Romanian
literature chance. „(” Stefan Dumitrescu is a chance of the Romanian
literature. Stefan Dumitrescu is a great chance of the Romanian Literature „.)
Over the years all three prophecies:
of Paraschivescu, of Ana Bandiana and of Adrian Paunescu, about the young
writer Stefan Dumitrescu, will come true. He has published in many newspapers
and magazines. Some he doesn`t even know them. He started, as I said, as a poet
in Branches Magazine / Revista Ramuri, edited by Miron Radu Paracshivescu, then published in Mugurel Mugur, the review
of the High School, and the Amphitheatre Magazine, a true laboratory where the
majority of writers in 1970 – 1980 could grow. In the autumn of 1969 some of
his poems were cast on Radio Bucharest. In the summer of 1970 he had atraining
period at the Horizon newspaper in Valcea, where he was able to write a lot,
reports on the big Hydropower site from Lotru, literary reviews, social
articles, poetry and prose. Then he published poetry and collaborated with
various articles as a student at the Contemporary, the Morning Star, the
Literary Romania (the Chronicles and literary reviews) Arges magazine, The
Youth Spark / Scateia Tineretului, radio, television. He had over 30 radio
poetic moments, where his friend, the poet Dan Verona,supported him and five
television poetic moments.
After he became Professor of
Psychology and Education at the Pedagogical College in Tulcea continued working
for the cultural magazines of the time.
He founded and led literary circles, like The Flame literary circle, and edited
magazines and newspapers which published his students, young people, being a
discoverer of talents. Two talented poets today, members of the Writers’ Union,
were discovered by him. Because as a student when he worked at all the
magazines of culture in the capital, was considered a hope of the Romanian
literature, and his poetry read at the first meeting of the Flame Circle
strongly impressed the audience (Adrian Paunescu saying about it that is „A
chance to Romanian literarii. A chance of Romanian Literature”) in 1976 he was
co-opted by the Renaissance group headed by two great patriotic intellectuals group that aimed to discover
and help the talented young artists (in all fields), who over the years,
through their literary and scientific discoveries and creations, will trigger a
true cultural renaissance in Romania. Unfortunately due to the tightening of
censorship and security, the Renaissance
group had to go underground, continuing to operate since its foundation (in
1965) until today. Within these groups operates the Futurology Office in Bucharest,
which gathers the best minds that Romania has currently in the social sciences.
He is one of the few Romanian writers
proposed for the Nobel Prize.
12 January 2013, 20:31
WORKS: PUBLISHED OR covered:
, 1973. Volume of poetry „Nicolae
Labiş, a cosmogonic portrait„, 57 poems. Read full volume at the first meeting
of the Flame Literary Circle, Bucharest, September 15, 1973.
„Biography of a Revolution„, volume
of reports.
The play „Laughter” is played at the
Majestic Hall in a memorable reading-show performed by actors of Giuleşti
Theatre, in the drama circle of the Department of Drama of the Romanian
Writers` Union. Department of Drama Award of the Romanian Writers` Union in
1981.
„Heaven and mole.” Play, National
Award for original drama.
„Poems of the Danube Valley.” Volume
of poetry, Litera Publishing House
„How beautiful you pass through the
world, woman.” Drama, Theater Magazine, No. 8, 1988
Play „Laughter”, published in the
magazine „Political and Literary Dacia”.
„Love like a bird , short story
published in” Anthology of Romanian Writers „.
„Everything about evaluation”
Romanian School Publishin House, limited edition, Tulcea.
„Ancestral Bottom„, volume of prose,
Inedit Publishing House.
„Happiness comes later” volume of
prose, Inedit Publishing House.
1993 „Delirium, Volume II„,
novel, won first prize in the contest
organized by Express Magazine, „Who writes the novel” Delirium, Volume II „,
the sequel to the novel” Delirium, Volume I ” in the manner in which Marin
Preda would have written. ”
1996 „Mihai Eminescu – a Jesus of the
Romanian people„. Essay, Inedit Publishing House
„Complete Dictionary of IL
Caragiale`s drama„, Conphis Publishing House, Ramnicu Valcea
„Wisdom of Oedipus’ drama, Steaua Dobrogei
Publishing House.
„Positive Intelligence and Negative
Intelligence„, limited edition, Casa Corpului Didactic, Tulcea.
2000 „High poems„, Conphis Publishing
House, Ramnicu Valcea.
2000 „Hymns of Great Love” volume of
poetry, Harvia Publishing House
2000 „Caragiale hugs Stalin„, volume
of theater, Harvia Publishing House
2000 „Two staggering plays” volume of
theater, Harvia Publishing House
2000 „The truth about
revolution. Essay” Origins Almanac, USA.
2001 „Master Manole; The Climb,
Volume of theater”, Harvia Publishing House
2001 „The glory and greatness of the
martyr Ilie Ilascu or Bessarabia, Come home, volume of poetry, Harvia
Publishing House
” Guidance of educational and
vocational orientation and self orientation, Harvia Publishing House
2002
„We Pray to Thee, God!” and psychotherapeutic volume of religious and
psychotherapeutic poetry, Publishing HARV.
2002 „Mikhail Gorbachev, the greatest
man of the twentieth century, one of the biggest killers of mankind.” LIR
Publishing House, Iasi
„The Morning Star. The psychoanalysis
and philosophy of this poem”, Criterion Publishing House, USA
Play „Laughter„, translated into
English, published in the Asymmetry journal, Paris
„Delirium, Volume II” sequel of the
„Delirium, Volume I” by Marin Preda. Fortuna Publishing House, Ramnicu Valcea.
Play ” Caragiale hugs Stalin” Special
Prize of the Jury at „Bogdan Amaru” Theater Festival , Ramnicu Valcea.
Novel „You’ll be the sky too„,
Criterion Publishing House, USA.
2006 The System of coup d`etat of
1989, Origines Magazine, U.S. and Renaissance – Euro Observatory Magazine, No.
4, Germany, December 2006.
2006 We pray to Thee, O Lord!” Volume
of religious poetry, Renaissance- European Observatory electronic magazine, No.
4, December 2006, Germany
2006 „And you’ll be the sky too„,
novel, Renaissance European Observatory electronic magazine , No. 4, December
2006 A new interpretation of the poem
The Morning Star, by Mihai Eminescu, published in the electronic magazine
Renaissance Euro Observer, No. 4, Germany, December 2006
2007 Novel „You’ll be the sky too,
Anamarol Publishing House, Bucharest,
2007 „Saving of the human
civilization” Anamarol Publishing House, Bucharest,
2007 „Paths of Life” Anthology of
Poetry, Anamarol Publishing House
2007 Brancusi, drama, published in
the Portal journal Maiastra, Tragu Jiu
2007 Brancusi, drama, published in
the electronic journal The Observer in Toronto, Canada
2007 Brancusi, drama, published in
the AGERO journal, Germany, The Observer Magazine in Toronto, and Iosif Vulcan
journal of the Romanian Writers in Australia
2007 Brancusi, drama, published in the Euro-Observer Magazine in
Germany
2007 BRANCUSI, drama, published in the AGE journal
2007 „Pygmalion or the Broken Wing of
Scream, drama , Grand Prix of „Bogdan
Amaru” National Theatre Festival, Ramnicu Valcea
2007 Pygmalion or the Broken Wing of
Scream, bilingual volume published in The Observer electronic Magazine,
Toronto, Canada
Poems in the Anthology „ROMANIA From
the SOUL”, published by the Association ProBasarabia and Bukovina
Second prize (first prize not
awarded) for the comedy „COW, REVOLUTION and UFO „, the „Bogdan Amaru” National
Festival of Theater, Ramnicu Valcea, Fourth Edition 2009.
2010 „The children murdered in 1989
Spit us or I kill myself as a revolt against you, ROMANIAN PEOPLE!” Published
in „Signs in balance” in Oradea. Prize for drama awarded by „Signs in the
balance” Magazine
2010 The premiere of the play, „Two
women smart, crazy and as mad as a March hare,” Victor Ion Popa Theater in
Barlad
During the years 1990-2010 several
novels, plays and esays appeared in cultural magazines of the Romanian
communities, such as: The Observer
in Toronto, The Christian Europe and
Agero in Germany, Iosif Vulcan in Australia, „Destinies” the magazine of the
Society of the Romanian writes in Canadia.
2010 in The Observer in
Toronto,Canada appeared the English translation of the plays „Master Manole„,
„Laughter” and Pygmalion or Wing
screamed France ”
2011 Appeared the plays „Laughter”
and „Business” in Pheonix magazine, Arizona
2011 in the „Destiny” Review of the
Romanian Writers` Society from Canada
appeared : „Ways by which countries can emerge from the current economic crisis
VERY EASILY IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME,
without being diminished wages and pensions, without being increased taxes and
with no Unemployment – an epoch-making
discovery. „
2011 The play „Laughter„, translated
into French and Italian, published in
the Catholic magazine „Mission Brussels”, in Brussels
2011 The bilingual Romanian – French
play Brancusi in the Catholic magazine „Mission Brussels”, Brussels
2012 The comedy „You , wretches, Aliens are coming”
received the second prize at Com Fest 2012
at National Festival of Comedy l
organized by Theatre of Comedy in Bucharest. It is the 8th national playwriting
award for Stefan Dumitrescu
2012
Volume of poetry „101 Poems’, Biodova Publishing House, Bucharest.
2012 ” You’ll be the sky too!”,
novel, Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing
House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
2012 „FM Dostoevsky commits suicide
at Bucharest”, novel, Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd,
Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
2012, The novel „Great Love„, Cos
Enterprises Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE
19809 USA
2012 „The MURDER of the GREAT Martyrs of the Romanian People„, novel, Cos Enterprises
Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
2012 „PSYCHOTHERAPY AND EDUCATION
THROUGH GOOD” Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105,
3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
” THEORY of GOOD Revolution” Cos
Enterprises Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE
19809 USA
2012
„Delirium, VOL II” , novel by Stefan Dumitrescu sequel to the famous
novel „Delirium, Volume I” by Marin Preda. Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing
House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
2012 „Poplar on Hill OR SAVING IN GOD”
(romance novel), Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105,
3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
2012 „Hill that never ends OR Myth of
Sisyphus” (romance novel) Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing House, Silverside Rd,
Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
2012
„Moonlit of Love” (romance novel), Cos Enterprises Inc..Publishing
House, Silverside Rd, Ste.105, 3214 Wilmington, DE 19809 USA
These books can be found and bought
from the online bookshops: AMAZON (www.amazon.com) and BARNES ET NOBLES
(google-Barnes et Nobles)
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