DAN CRISTEA (Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A.)

THE HERETICAL POETRY OF GELL U NAUM*

Gellu Naum is recognized today as one of the most re- markable Romanian Surrealists. In many respects speaking about him is to approach a chapter of the Romanian Surrealist movement. For Naum's career mirrors distinctly a good number . of its characteristics and setbacks. It is especially thanks to Naum's voice that is still a living tradition in , and, what is more important, a tradition of radical negation which, in spite of the conditions of censorship and ideo- logical opposition to it, has not ceased to manifest its social relevance through the medium of poetry. Born in 1915, in , Naum studied philosophy at the universities of Bucharest and , and published his first book of poems The Incendiary Traveller in 1936. The book has been followed by other collections of poems and prose poems: Freedom to Sleep on a Forehead (1937), Vasco de Gamcz (1940), The Corridor of Sleep (1946). After World War II, Naum has continued to write Surrealist poetry but it was only in 1968, with the book Athanor, that he could publish again. For twenty some years, until the so- called "thaw" of the sixties, Naum was permitted to publish only translations from the French Hu?o ) and books for children (among them, a charming one, The Adventures of Apolodor [1959]). From 1968 on other volumes of poems came as follows: Collected Poems (1970), Poeticize, Poeticize... (1970), The Beastly Tree (1971), My Weary Father (1972), The Description of the Tower (1975), The Other Side (1980). Naum has also written several plays and his adaptation of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew for the stage has enjoyed great success. In the history of Romanian Surrealism Naum is featured as a member of the group of poets Romanian scholars have referred to

* I am grateful to Stavros Deligiorgis for providing the translations of the Romanian texts. A version of this article was presented at the 1986 MLA con- ference. 150

as the second wave, or the second generation of Surrealists. They are distinguished from the first generation of the avant-garde of the twenties who had a different background and were grouped particularly around three Surrealist magazines: , Alge, Urmuz. The other poets of the second Surrealist generation are , Paul Paun, D. Trost and Virgil Teodorescu, all of them fully active and experimenting with poetic techniques in the years from 1935 to 1947. The establishment of the Communist dictatorship put a brutal end to the activity of the Romanian Surrealist group which had already attracted the attention of Andre Breton. Luca, Paun, and Trost left the country and their works have never been allowed to circulate since. Teodorescu was the exception: he had become a Party official and was also the president of the Romanian Writer's Union for a few years. Gellu Naum, on the other hand, a self-effacing personality, has been living in proud solitude in the village of Comana near Bucharest, and his recent books of poems borrow numerous elements from the atmosphere of the place where he lives. What is particular to the second generation of Romanian Sur- realists, who were educated in prewar , is their doctrinal intransigence. In one way or another, their writings communicate a sense of urgency touching all forms of artistic expression. The poets who preceded them only with a few years should be called Modernists rather than Surrealists. They were interested in the exploratory stage of poetic experimentation, and with them poetry is still literature and literary illusion. On the contrary, Naum's generation takes poetry as a mode of existence, the only mode possible and suitable to them. Their high demands upon poetry are made from a vital perspective, for poetry is always equated with a risky-taking attitude toward life. Poetry is the unique content and outlet to them. "Poetry breaks with ex- actitude the poets' arteries" claims Naum in 1946. Breton's own example of intransigence is ever-present in the young Romanian poets' thoughts. Their formulations are frequently reminiscent of the master's manifestoes. In the preface to Naum's Collected Poems, Ov. S. Crohmal- niceanu describes these aspects as follows:

It was not until recently, and only about the years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, that the Surrealist movement in our country grew to have anything like a clear