The
news that Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on April 17th has overwhelmed
the news—even for those who are likely to know—that another amazing literary
figure died only 2 days before: Nina Cassian. Nina Cassian was the pen name
for the Romanian poet born as Renée Annie Katz. Cassian’s biography is
the stuff of Nobel Prize winners, like that of Joseph Brodsky or Czelsaw
Milosz. She grew up primarily in Bucharest, where her family relocated when
she was eleven. Her first collection of poetry was condemned by the
Communist authorities. For a time Cassian tailored her writing to be less
controversial, but she was an exuberant personality and secretly wrote satires
of the government during the oppressive Ceausescu regime. In 1985, Cassian was invited to teach
at New York University. While here, her friend, Gheorghe Ursu, was arrested
and tortured to death. The authorities found Ursu’s journals in which he
also transcribed Cassian’s unpublished poems lampooning the government. This resulted in Cassian’s home being seized
by the authorities and all her books and papers being confiscated. Realizing
that her life would be in danger if she returned, Cassian appealed to the US
Government for asylum and, having it granted, remained here until her death on
April 15, 2014. I had the good fortune to meet Cassian in the early 90’s. I was introduced to her by poet Dana Gioia at a reading she was giving in SoHo. She had a magnificent presence: elegant in the way we think of great Hollywood actresses. I can still hear her voice in my head, for the way she delivered a line was indelible, as was the power of her poetry, which is really the focus here.
Cassian was incredibly prolific, publishing over 50 books in her lifetime: poetry, children’s books, fiction, translations, even puppet plays. She had a playful imagination but also a big heart. This may account for her poetry being something like surreal love poetry. But don’t think of her as another Pablo Neruda; her poetry is quite different. The playfulness of Cassian also accounts for her prolific publication of children’s books, which in turn might give you an inkling of her surreal bent. Think of fables and fairytales, but those which don’t shy away from the darkness. For instance her poem “Sand,”
My hands creep forward on the hot sand
to unknown destinations;
perhaps
to the shoreline,
perhaps
to the arms from which they are severed
and
which lie on the beach
like
two decapitated eels.
(translated
by Naomi Lazard)
What
is remarkable about so much of Cassian’s poetry is that the majority of it seems
to lose nothing in translation. For
instance, in the marvelous poem, “Orchestra,” the ethereal quality of the
beloved is likened to the elusive emotional force of music as it is played. Even in English that pursuit of an impossible
spirit is perfectly rendered:
Climbing
the scales three octaves at a time,
I
search for you among the high notes where
the
tender flute resides. But where are your
sweet
eyelashes? Not there.
Then
I descend among the sunlit brasses—
there
funnels glistening like fountain tips.
I
let them splash me with their streaming gold,
but
I can’t find your lips.
Then
daring ever deeper I explore
the
depths the elemental strings command.
Their
bows will not create a miracle
without
your stroking hand.
The
orchestra is still. The score is blank.
Cold
as a slide rule the brasses, strings and flute.
Sonorous
lover, when will you return?
The
orchestra is mute?
(translated
by Dana Gioia)
At
times she rendered with perhaps greater clarity than other more celebrated
poets the problem of art under tyrannical regimes. Though one could also see it as a kind of
pride, it is a pride born of necessity in the face of oppression:
Vowel
A clean vowel
is
my morning,
Latin
pronunciation
in
the murmur of confused time.
With
rational syllables
I’m
trying to clear the occult mind
and
promiscuous violence.
My
linguistic protest
has
no power.
The
enemy is illiterate.
(translated
by Brenda Walker and Andrea Deletant)
For
Cassian, language is sensuous and even sexual.
Reading her poetry one is more inclined to think of poetry as a kind of
dance, the movement of a body.
Licentiousness
Letters
fall from my words
as
teeth might fall from my mouth.
Lisping? Stammering?
Mumbling?
Or
the last silence?
Please
God take pity
on
the roof of my mouth,
on
my tongue,
on
my glottis,
on
the clitoris in my throat
vibrating,
sensitive, pulsating,
exploding
in the orgasm of Romanian.
(translated
by Brenda Walker and Andrea Deletant)
Clearly
that appeal to God also shows a keen awareness of the danger involved, that one
is not only exposed to the single lover as a poet but to the authorities who
are in power. If poetry is a form of
lovemaking, it is, once published, also public and, therefore, a terrible kind
of vulnerability. This may also account
for why the majority of her poetry is love poetry. But also Cassian is masterful in her embrace
of being fully human. That may be the
core of her poetry.
Her
face was striking with its prominent chin and aquiline nose. And so she made these powerful features the
point of her poem “Self-Portrait.” Perhaps
few poems so well exemplify her desire to fully embrace the great range of our
humanity. Pointing out the oddities of
her own face, plunging into them, and insisting on them even as others might
mock them, results in an enlargement of what we call “human” as so much of her poetry does:
I
was given at birth this odd triangular
face,
the sugared cone that you see now,
the
figurehead jutting from some pirate prow,
framed
by trailing strands of moonlike hair.
Disjoined
shape I’m destined to carry around
and
thrust out steadily through endless days,
wounding
the retinas of those who gaze
on
the twisted shadow I cast upon the ground.
Disowned
by the family from which I came,
who
am I? Earth conspires to turn me back,
the
white race and the yellow, the redskin and the black,
till
even to the species I lay little claim.
And
only when—a self-inflicted woman—
I
cry out; only when I face the cold;
and
only when by time I’m stained and soiled
do
they find me beautiful: and call me human.
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