Review of Psychopedagogy/Revista de Psihopedagogie, 1 (2008), pp.119-132 ISSN 1584-4919

SENSORIAL DISABILITY AND CREATION (I)

Ph.D.lecturer ANCA ROZOREA University of Bucharest

The article, presented in this number and in the following one of the „Psycho- pedagogy magazine“ is structured in two parts: the first one – theoretical-interpretative – and the second one – a stating research. The aimed objectives are: firstly – making evident, analyzing and interpreting the way of sublimation through art of the consequences of sensorial (visual and hearing) disability and, that way, making easier the „encounter“ with ones of the poetic and plastic creations of persons with this type of disabilities; secondly – remarking the tendency to activate or not, in the case of young people, of some social stereotypes regarding persons with sensorial disabilities and the possibility of their transfer even to the artistic creations of these persons.

„The abnormality” of the creator and suffering as value

Generally, the „normality” and its correlative prefixed meaning an absolute logical opposition – the „abnormality” (that means without normality) are assimilated to ways of existence of the human being which implicate either the state of stability and of health or the state of instability, of dissolution and of illness. The semantic and phenomenological delimitation of these human realities depends on the socio-cultural, normative, and value-giving patterns of a historically determined society, on one side, and on the other side, on the scientific perspective in which we interpret them (philosophical, moral, medical, psychological, anthropological, social perspective etc.). In the virtue of the ambivalent structural-functional disposition of the human person, the normality and the abnormality are „situations-states” equally possible on the existential axis of a person, without fixed borders, with reversible dynamic and direction (especially if the normality is interpreted as equivalent to health and the abnormality as equivalent to illness, in general and to the psychical illness in particular). K. Schneider remarked, in connection with this, that „the normal personalities are those who are out of the average. The average standard stays for rule and not for standard of value. There for, a border between normal and abnormal personalities does not exist, because the average is permanently subject to variations”. (Schneider, K., 1957)

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The mental health varies as signification and aspect depending on the conditions of existence and on the spiritual standards of the human-kind’s history (E. Fromm). The state of health coincide with the normality as far as the human being can develop adequate acting patterns, adapted to the permanent changes produced on the economical, social, political, cultural plans etc. by a proper perception of the reality and by fitting needs, personal aims, ideals etc. to social standards and to her own standards; only this way the human being can gain her stability and can exercise the independence in thinking, feeling, acting, decision, conception, behavior, always aiming to development and self-accomplishment (including to moral valorization, to transcendental spirituality and to creation). In exchange, abnormality includes all types of manifestations which suppose the psycho-individual lack of balance (from the disorder of the personality’s system to different forms and grades of social lack of adaptability, of deviation from the normative and value-system of the socio-cultural integrative environment). The abnormality can be the favorable „host” of an illness (somatic but firstly psychical illness), but is not equivalent to illness, to its complete clinical evolution, because illness is only a way of manifestation of the abnormality. G. Ionescu (1995) consider that abnormality refers especially to conducts and behaviors and illness is an individual fact, with a certain psychical dynamic which, as it is stopped, can lead to partial or total recovery, so to normality, which, above all, means, for the individual, regaining his „exterior and interior liberty” (H. Ey). Without insisting on the patterns for the interpretation of normality (from considering it as Utopia, as health, as average value or as process) we agree the points of view of the anthropology and of the trans-cultural psychiatry, according to which the interpretation of the normality can not be made in a general way, but in the limits of different socio-cultural and civilization patterns of the society, according to the values accepted as normal. In the same interpretative order, the abnormality is a deviation from the statistic standard, in a positive way (exceptional persons, who play a creative role in history and with special performances) or in a negative way (persons with functional deficit, with performance deficit, with a disorganized and disharmonious personality-system), not being necessary identified with the pathology (to which, unfortunately, it can sometimes tend); it implies „pathos”, that means the direct and concrete feeling of suffering and of helplessness, generalized and permanent on the level of the entire being. In connection with this, it is impossible not to ask our-selves (and not to try dramatically to find answers) if the great creators which history will not be able to forget, or persons with different disabilities (sensorial, neuromotional disabilities, disorders of language or behavior) were or they still are abnormal persons only because they occupy privileged positions on Gauss’s curve or because suffering represented or represents for them a „way of living”…? Illness, disability, unfavorable psycho-social conjuncture, suffering can not really be challenges, possible stimulant impulses for creation, particularly when there is aptitude and talent? 120 Review of Psychopedagogy/Revista de Psihopedagogie, 1 (2008), pp.119-132 ISSN 1584-4919

Octavian Paler offers a possible answer: „If suffering played a role in culture that happened because it was combated. It is difficult for me to think that an artist owes something to the unhappiness to which he was confronted. Unhappiness did not produce values. It was transformed in a value.” (O. Paler, 2005). History, however, offers lots of examples in which suffering, even illness or disability were ennobled by eternal creations. F. M. Dostoievsky, an epileptic, asked himself pathetically, referring to the transformative value of his spirituality produced by the pathologic „ecstasy” which occurred before his crises: „Who cares if my state is morbid? Who cares if this exaltation is an „abnormal” phenomenon if the moment that it generates, when I return to health, turns to reach superior harmony and beauty and gives me in an extreme way a feeling of plenitude, of measure, of quietness and of fusion in an impulse of the prayer with the highest synthesis of life?” The excessive introversion and the schizoid constitution of Vincent van Gogh (in fact, schizophrenia, conforming to the diagnostic of the great psychiatrist and philosopher K. Jaspers), together with the hypo-maniacal states, did not prevent him from being a pure intellectual and an exceptional painter, from having, like Delacroix said, „a storm in his heart and a sun in his head”. The strong personality and the compositional genius of great L. van Beethoven were not destroyed by his later deafness; Apperce, in his doctorate dissertation (1929) wrote, concerning this subject: „a good musician can read a score from the beginning to the end without hearing it, or his interior hearing is enough. A composer gives birth to his work in his mind, he „hears” it, he understands it, without having to listen it; his brain, his imagination produce the masterwork.” Therefore, Beethoven’s deafness, together with poverty, loneliness and suffering, „isolated” him from the world by a barrier of silence, but „brought him together” with himself by analysis of his interior life, giving birth to forms that have not, still, equals in originality, force and perfection. The victory against himself, the transfiguration of suffering in equanimity and happiness, in brilliant creation (like „Arietta” from the Sonata op. 111) are the sign of „approaching himself and a superior reality” (C. G. Yung) by suffering assumed in the most elevated way possible. In a similar way, F. Goya, suffering unexpectedly, at the age of 46, by an atrocious illness of the nervous system (with troubles of sight and hearing, paralysis, partial blinding and other manifestations generating tormenting suffering) was not prevent from continuing to paint, approaching all styles, becoming a giant who revolutionized the romantic art and who expressed a prodigious scale of emotions, from the demonic visions, fruit of his hallucinations and confusions, to the most nuanced lyrical aspects. The hypomaniac H. de Balzac was always performing on the world’s stage, his ambivalent personality, with cycloid, enthusiastic and labile orientation being sustained not only by an extraordinary talent, but also by an iron will; all this comes to light in his masterly literary works and in his characters, transformed in authentic, metaphorically shaped human types.

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Megalomaniac, with a precarious health, distracted, hyperesthezic at social contacts, with a schizoid and autistic structure, with multiple organic symptoms and with „three-quarters blind eyes“, F. Nietzsche gave proof of a special sensibility and of the certitude that, for him, creating represents a superior way of liberation and a therapeutic method. As his biographers have pointed out, F. Chopin „seems the type of the romantic, introspective musician; this cultivation of the ego, this romanticism are mostly due to the tuberculosis; he was pouring out his heart in his works, as others pour out their heart in prayers.“ And, like him, many other creators: writers, painters, musicians, great artists all of them – Gauguin, Modigliani, Novalis, Molière, Schiller, Cehov, Kafka, Schubert, Weber, Pafanini, Chopin, Camus, Spinoza, Panait Cerna, Ciprian Porumbescu etc. For Lord Byron, his deformed leg was, in his own words, „the unhappiness in my life“, but this fact didn’t prevent from recognizing a poetic genius. A lot more disadvantaged due to his anomaly, Toulouse Lautrec became, however, a great painter. And, like them, lots of other creators: writers, painters, musicians, all great artists – Gaugain, Modigliani, Novalis, Molière, Schiller, Cehov, Kafka, Schubert, Weber, Paganini, Camus, Spinoza, P. Cerna, C. Porumbescu etc. The examples could continue and could be multiplied with personalities who are closer to us, some of them persons with disabilities, (generally called „they” !!), who are lost yet in the grey of everyday life, in anonymity, but who – with a little sensibility and disponibility to interact –, we can discover, appreciate, love, who’s pain we can be solidary with, pain that they sublimate through their poetry or that they express in pictural images.

Who are they? Who are they? But who are we? Terribly simple questions, but question to which we can quite hardly respond if between us, who are proud of our statistic „normality” and they, the people who bear the stamp of a destiny less generous by the disability or illness that they suffer of, we build artificial borders, unworthily of our human and universal nature and value. The persons with different disabilities, especially sensorial ones, to which we concentrate our attention here, (they) are, above all, humans like us, with a personality built continually, in the tumult of life, in its daily pursuit and who fulfills, in many cases, by the creation, by the artistic act of a higher or lower amplitude and value, recognized or lost in anonymity but, nevertheless, liberating and great by his existence itself. Their disability, whichever this could be, don’t prevent them from being „fighters“ and winners (at least in the struggle against themselves and not only!!), in the struggle against pain and against the consequences of their disability which in many cases they sublimate through their works- literary, poetic, musical or artistic works. Unfortunately, our moments and the Great Time are rigorously programmed to satisfy our pragmatic and adaptive daily (in many cases, only a biological comfort) and lesser to offer us the respite, maybe even the moment of 122 Review of Psychopedagogy/Revista de Psihopedagogie, 1 (2008), pp.119-132 ISSN 1584-4919 inspiration, in the purpose of valorifying our aptitudes, our talent or our most intimate feelings. Sometimes, however, one can find in himself the power to approach one of them and something that they created or felt. And then, you think instantly to N. Berdiaev’s words: „humans defend themselves in front of the Creator not only by expiation but also by their creation.” By creation (every man can be creative!) we can pass beyond personal biological limits determined by a disability, we can resolve frustrations, we can defeat inferiority complex. C Rogers remarks that the most important engine for creativity is the fact that humans tend to actualize themselves, to become – trough creation – what they potentially are; and Rollo May (1975) considers that creativity is the fundamental manifestation of the human who accomplishes his mission in the world. A. Adler says explains the fact that humans are creators in different domains aiming to compensate their own needs (like the oyster, „creates the pearl to cover the grain of sand”).

From the inferiority complex to the creative act The inferiority complex appears strongly to many persons with sensorial disability (visual or audible), „social inferiority” (as A. Adler calls it) and this entails troubles of auto-evaluation, the lack of self-confidence and self-doubt, timidity, incertitude, failure-conduit and, from here, demobilization, passivity and auto-isolation. „Complex represents a totality of feelings and personal aspects with a very strong affective substance, released by events, by situations, by human relations who have a defrauding character” (P. P. Neveanu, 1979). The inferiority complex is a behavioral algorithm who fixes a psychical tension, a „nuclear element” (C. G. Jung) who contains a signification, unconscious but autonomic and full of „independent will”, dominating the conscious ego. From the classical psychoanalyses point of view (S. Freud), the unconscious plays an essential role in the „psychical system”, in the structural- dynamic organization of the personality. Contemporary psychology defines unconscious in an extensive and positive way (not only as a receiver of the born tendencies, restrained, repressed, frustrated), but also as a psychical instance who includes the hidden tendencies, the emotional conflicts generated by the intimate stimulants of personality, an instance who has, as H. Ey remarks, a positive role also – to energize and animate the entire psychical life, to facilitate, by spontaneous combinations, he creative process. Francis E. Vaughan considers that unconscious is the central element of intuition and imagination. The dynamics of personality can be expressed trough the relations between the structural instances of mind; the pulsing of the unconscious pass in the conscious sphere of the Ego, having the possibility to exteriorize through symbolic forms, not directly, but „by devious ways”, through a process of sublimation (aiming to avoid the sensorship’s barriers of interdiction). S. Freud considered the process of sublimation as an imaginative contraband against instinctive forces. The unconscious contents are „distillated” and „disguised” in new forms by a symbolism of transfiguration.

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The most important forms of sublimation are the creative activity and the dreaming activity. The creativity is, in A. Adler’s opinion, a privileged way to clear the inferiority complex. Inferiority can result from suffering and disability or from refusing to assume the statute and the consequences of the disability, especially on the psycho-social plan. Lots of persons manage, therefore, to pass beyond their own limits, to compensate this sort of manifestations. In A. Adler’s opinion, the greatness of man appears when he begins to see himself as he is. In that moment, the compensations drive often to personal accomplishment with reverberations on the social plan. Unlike the psychical ill people, to whom art is the expression of mental disorders and of a reality generated by them, in the case of the sensorial deficient creation (lierer or plastic) is the projection of some states and feelings, of the existential uneasiness, of uncompensated complex and, not in last place, is the proof of bad artistic aptitudes. Creation has, this way, a triple value: a spiritual value – through the projection of the internal psychical content, an esthetic value – through the esthetic content represented by the sensible transfiguration of internal and external psychical reality and an ethical value – through the philosophical content expressing values, ideals, beliefs. The symbolic content of creation is dependent of the ideated-affective complex of the creator, which C. G. Yung links to archetypal images, considered true patterns of the symbolic schemes. The symbol reproduces the objective, real world but it gives her another signification – which concerns the nature of human spirit. And this way, creativity represents an elevated and original form of „meeting” of the creator with the world, and the understanding of artistic creation means the „meeting” of the world with the creator. In the case of persons with disabilities of any kind, as creators, this „meeting” must be without preconceived ideas, without stereotypes, empathetic and loyal, an occasion to „recover lost messages” (Umberto Eco), unspoken or unheard. We will try next to rejoice at that sort of meeting with them, referring to some artistic works. Our joy would be much bigger if these creations would cause the interest of all those who read this article.

From „Homer constellation” to the word „spoken” by images „Homer constellation“ is an anthology of sightless writers which includes poems, but also short prose, with real artistic value and sensibility. A remarkable thing is that most of the authors have the bachelor degree, especially of Letters, but also of Law, of Commercial Studies or of Art; some of them are physiotherapists or workers. Lots of them are well-known poets, with volumes who have suggestive titles: „The last show“ (Anatol Coca), „Tardy flight“ (Gheorghe Ardeleanu), „Bloody twig“, „A picture looking to the wall“ (Doina Felicica Mihoc), „Beyond light“, „Destinies for blue roses“ (Moise Ciorba), „The changes of linen“ (Dorel Ghemii), „Destiny“, „Lonelyness“ (Aurora Strajeru), „Marginal“ (Diana Monica Buciuman), „No entry“, „Wings borrowed from angels“ (Ana Hompot), „The cosmic illusion“ (Radu Sergiu Ruba). The title of the anthology is suggestive also. Homer 124 Review of Psychopedagogy/Revista de Psihopedagogie, 1 (2008), pp.119-132 ISSN 1584-4919 was blind and therefore, when you approach some of the verse, with shyness and a little bit fearful, you have the feeling that you opened a wonderful gate and that beyond it the „present“ appears in another way, limited, sublimed but strong. The verse expresses an interior force born of limits, of profound understanding, maybe of frustrations and suffering. The processes of living an reliving reality are determined by the interior structures, by the interior life defined by aims and ideals, by victories and defeats, by wishes and accomplishments, by life-experience in the darkness of blindness, but also in the light of sincere, discreet feelings. Reading the poems, one realizes that he is in front of some creative personalities, with a motivation that translates the relation between feeling and creation. Their work is itself feeling, because it reflects the emotional content; feelings become representations and representations become poetic forms by which soul and subjectivity reveal themselves. The value of creation stands, in fact, in personal value, that results from the complex correlations of life which, through art, gain a special signification, symbolical, sublimed. The dim sight gives a particular aspect to feeling, a special intensity, profoundness and a value accentuated by the consciously accepted enclosing, contributing to achieve interior liberty expressed artistically. This way, interior life builds itself, becoming richer and more expressive. The departure point for the artistic creation is always the life experience, as understanding and personal feeling, which becomes exterior and objective being communicated to others, in fact by reliving all human experience. The multiple „noises” of quotidian in the context of a difficult adaptation try to suppress the creative feeling and interior unrest. That is why, as remarks the sightless writer Radu Sergiu Ruba, „for every sightless, the cultural information precede often the impact with the equivalent reality“, with the reality resembling, sometimes, „a journey standing“, in which space is pressed together: „In my right hand I hold a denudation of leaves/In my left hand I hold my own meaning/with the space between hate and love/I strike blunt nails into my wood portrait“ – (Adrian Rosca – „Letter“) and time expands: „But time lyes crucified on a thought/On the way from-returning-forward“ (Moise Ciorba – „Lonelyness“). Through poetry, sightless try, it seems, to liberate themselves from the „handcuffs” of reality: „Because the uproar of the world resembles a palm/In which, like a butterfly, I struggle“ (Manda Mayer – „Wake me up“). We see, sometimes, a strange mixture of quotidian insecurity and highest aspirations: „I live virtually immersed/into the ocean of horizons“, in a „small universe unaccomplished/who born dying“, knowing that „when I would find/my image in the water/considering him a stranger/I would have to pass away” (Gheorghe Ardeleanu – „Depth“). Aspiration becomes prayer: „Stranger, with my step whispered to narcissus/take my eyes by the hand in the night and bring them/To the summer way, by the dust of dreams/To the house of the opened night’s queens” (Gheorghe Carligeanu-Birtu – „And I traveled to the end of the world“).

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Reading some of the poems we remember Novalis’s „Hymns to the night“...an enigmatic lamentation of everyone and of no one, an echo vibrates in the night...a sinking into suffering’s abyss, an image of a discreet suffering, not shown, felt as a strange living apart: „My voice, closed forever in loneliness“ (Ioana Fertu – „Once upon a time“). Night (extremely frequent element)...in a lightened universe; night in the clear light of the sunrise; night beyond time and space: „It is so late and so much night in us/That we forgot down and light“ (Moise Ciorba – „Incertitude“). And, therefore, „I chiseled my calvary/where I amount to and I explore/the clocks strike in the dark/a sign of cheating” (Moise Ciorba – „The clock“). The apparent simplicity of these verses hides ideatic profoundness, a profoundness of feeling, a symbolic transposition of the interior tumult; poetry, like every art, is an intentional product, artistically founded on the reality metamorphose (of real existence) in acts of conscience. The destiny is understood and assumed, in a conscious but nevertheless painful way, by sightless: „vagrants without luck“ (Petru Th. Mereuta – „Coming back“), who „always watched the mirror in face“ (Petru Th. Mereuta – „Confession“) so that „Dreams and passions/Are spinned out by the wound/Scream of the moon/Bleeding in the lyre“ (Ioana Fertu – „Stir“).The questions trouble the silence „through the night wrote by sins“ (Moise Ciorba – „Rondel“): „Why does the curse call me by him?“ (Moise Ciorba – „Ways“). Sometimes, answers make them kneel; introspectively, they feel interior emptiness and appears the quiet rising against all the opacities and limits of the Ego. It is born then „a picture looking to the wall“ (Doina Felicia Mihoc – „A picture looking to the wall“) or a „closed shell“ (Doina Felicia Mihoc – „The closed shell“); other times „I get tired watching“ (Doina Felicia Mihoc – „My age“) and telling „the love to the stars“ (Ioana Fertu – „Once upon a time“) and to the trees... and to the mirror or splitting „the dark deepness“ through prayers, „to the moment when all is nothing“ (Moise Ciorba – „Song of the evening“). With the mind’s eyes and the soul they understand (painfully!!) and transform artistically the stereotypes and the preconceived ideas „from the world“, that means our first impressions of others, of them, directly influenced by our expectations (in connection with social influences). The stereotypes are „mental schemes“(organized opinions and knowledge about people, objects, phenomena, situations) activated and transformed by „schematic procession“; people are, this way, often included in „classes“ or automatically attributed with certain features (sometimes the one who conceives the classes does not agree with these features). Like in the case of preconceived ideas, because of the stereotypes, the acts of a person are generalized only in connection with some particular aspects – non-significant, temporary, and fixed in his apriorical image, simplifying. Based on arbitrary clichés, stereotypes can be a source for social conflicts, for obstacles in knowing and establishing relations with another person or with her group, easily becoming a foundation for the phenomenon of stigmatization and, in consequence, of some inappropriate reactions, attitudes and behaviors.

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We can easily understand why they confess themselves like this: „Sine then I kept heading people’s gossip“ (Nina Geanca – „Which way?“) in the tumult of life, „a game with bitter flame“ (Nina Geanca –„A game with bitter flame“) and, moreover, some of them know that – in the virtue of the same stereotypes – they are stigmatized as „signed people“, symbols of the evil with malefic powers („more lucidity, more drama“, like Camil Petrecu would say): „You remember us only to scary your the children/when they are not obedient/And we used to be yours“ (Nicolae Florea – „The song of the demons“) although „we come to bring you luck’s message“ (Nicolae Florea – „Lily-white flowers“). They also express in a extremely suggestive way their force of resisting to „rumors“: „I will vagabond in the night/to sell other rumors of pearls/On the endless autumn’s road/I make my trade, peacefully./Travelers, don’t curse my fortune/With it I will embroider a myth.“ (Nina Geanca – „Rumors of pearls“) and of assuming their „fortune“, which is not enviable: „And they learned him to crunch together with the elephants/A piece of destiny in a pottery pan“(Adrian Rosca – „The story of a captive mad“). Human relationships, love, faith, become for them „light of light“, deep and holy silence which tries to cover old and forgot pains and which, in many cases, change into calm and serene joy. Sometimes, nevertheless, we don’t here them: „I called you/ But in your answer/ I didn’t find/my call carved“[…] „You don’t have the age of blood/Not even the age of stone,/Because stones called for a long time respond“(Doina Felicia Mihoc – „Absents“). And that is why new pains born: „And we returned then sadder that we were“(Ion Podosu – „The sun mills, the wind mills“) because the need to be with others is very strong: „It’s time to believe in you/like in a creed/It’s time to believe in us strongly“. Resignation, passivity, indifference, self-isolation but also love and hope: „I bring to my friend from far away/A handful of hope seeds“(Ana Hompot – „Bus poem“), so that „they share them selves in goldenrod flowers/with those who lived other time, the ones who come“(Gheorghe Ardeleanu – „Roots“). Together with hope, the quotidian torrent and suffering of any kind brake, in the darkness of the endless night itself, from which well unexpected powers and the will of living: „If waters of mist and of smoke/petrified the sources of eyes/other powers, from inside/enhance some other useful senses“ (Ioana Fertu – „When it snows“) and, in the same time, the dreams: „Don’t give as object to this graven image/the sunset lost in the abyss/But much better lose me in the rivers/So I can bleed in a dream’s coast“ (Diana Monica Buciumanu – „Do not hallow“). And this way, they wait for the dawn: „I wait for you, dawn/Dawn, breeze/Perfumed, transparent dawn“(Nicolae Florea – „Dawn“) and, through hope and through dreams pains and insurgence against the destiny are changed in alive feeling, in an infinite blue. The large-opened eyes towards poetry become hurried to hide their trembling and their eternity: „Live, love, dream“(Petru Th. Mereuţă – „Uncertainty”), because there is „food for dreams and for life“(Manda Mayer – „There was a day”). The struggle continues: „Don not turn your head! Do everything on purpose to the destiny! “ (Ioana Fertu – „Love poem“)

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The down appear with „happiness and faith for the journey“ and rise, this way, „destinies for blue roses“ and expectations metaphorically projected and expressed – with a compensatory and cathartic role – through images who compose a blue and light picture: „I would like also/ To get into the infinite blue/ And to be named light and azure/ To make from parasite shadow colors“ (Dorel Ghemii – „I would like also“), in which the Ego is in harmony with the sky and the light of the rainbow’s colors: „I plunged into the blue horizon/ To drink azure, to forget my own Ego/ To dissolve in the air, like light/ And to become the rainbow in the sky“ (Dorel Ghemii – „Renewal“) The soul can be ennobled with love, expressed by a surprising lyricism, in all its forms, sometimes related to the cycle of seasons. In every existence there is a duality: an angel and a demon, joy and sadness, living for himself and living for the beloved; love transcends the infinite, but also the limit of unhappiness, born from the darkness: „And I stay awake/ nights hurt me/ And the dawn forget to call me“ (Moise Ciorba – „Loneliness“). Without love, every feeling, every discovery, every joy of the fellow, would turn back to the obscure deepness of being and would become permanent as frustration and interior tension: „I am the tear, just the tear/ An eye of the wood/ my rain of savin“ (Aurora Strajeru – „Late“). The music of a heart which loves, of an indescribable nature, gives birth to creation, a relationship full of fondness between the beauty of the feeling and the charm of language. The liberated features of personality, the endless and often dramatic search of himself and of others, saturated of emotion and of the purity of the feeling, but also of the desire, are combined into a harmonic complexity which is exteriorized both simply and sensible: „Your sin told my view/ On an amphora with hemlock juice/ My sin made you twin with the being/ And with the light of deer blood“ (Adrian Rosca – „Post- scriptum“). From this personal experience appears a system of correlations of the meanings, in which the rhythms and the melody of life become sensible; life itself and the felling of love give force to these lines and to self-representation through creation: „With wooden fingers/ Someone/ rummages in my dreams/ He sometimes puts in the recycle bin some nightmares/ he sometimes classifies a pain/ He sometimes sets a love-stiff/ On a shelf with forbidden books/ Someone/ With soiled fingers/ rakes through my tears/ He turns them on all the sides/ I see his shadow on the wall“ (Ana Hompot – „Someone“). Fantasy, imagination models the world according to internal laws whose action is „as rapid as thought“; the forms of love are lightened or blurred by an automatic, intimate floodlight; at every moment, he gives value to a fragment of interior feeling: disquiet, „the autumn of love is wind and doubt“ (Gheorghe Carligeanu Birtu – „Autumn night“), suffering from love: „Dreams and passions/ Ladders the wound/ Scream of the moon/ Bleeds in the lyre“ (Ioana Fertu – „Sigh“), the need of love: „Love me“ (Aurora Strajeru – „Love me“), „To bleed in a dream’s rib“ (Diana Monica Buciumanu – „Do not hallow“) and of wedding: „You were my promise, as the light“ (Aurora Strajeru – „Disquiet“), to „get you with me in wedding train“ (Dorel Ghemii – „Austerity“), „the wanderer love“ (Gheorghe Carligeanu Birtu – „Sigh“) or refused love: „The children who turned the back to life/ Left our groom habit leafless“ (Adrian Rosca – „Post-scriptum“), which condemns to loneliness: „Then I told you my love/ 128 Review of Psychopedagogy/Revista de Psihopedagogie, 1 (2008), pp.119-132 ISSN 1584-4919

Oh!/ My voice latched for always in loneliness“ (Ioana Fertu – „Once upon a time“) or to resignation: „The corners of my heart are/ broken into pieces/ and my voice is more and more rarely carved in words“ (Ana Hompot – „I should write to you more often“), in a „sere garden of the heart“ (Aurora Srajeru – „Disquiet“), but, over all, accomplished love, near the person of one’s choice: „Oh, you, love, giving birth to miracles“ (Nicolae Florea), „Your eyes will talk with light“ (Manda Mayer). All these aspects of existence and feelings are sublimed and expressed sincerely and with lot of sensibility. R. Ingarden, polish esthetician, identifies in the construction of every artistic work (literary, poetic, musical, imagistic etc.) we can find two layers: „the presented world“, reproduced by the artistic content and „the schematized appearances“ or unities of sense and signification. We can identify these layers also in the poems gathered in this anthology (like they all wanted to unite) which we considered sincerely worthy to be known. The poetic universe („the represented world“) reproduces either elements of nature (the night, the sun, the stars) and others who, in a way or another, but surprising, refer to light and color (the sunrise, shining, azure, the rainbow etc.) or to the darkness (the deepness, the obscurity, the shadows), either existential questions and anxieties, either a diversified scale of feelings (sadness, regret, the need of others and of love, despair or optimism, faith, hope, nostalgia, love in all its forms) and this universe is realized through some expressive instruments. The elements of the „unseen“, but inferred and felt reality are actualized and transposed into visual and auditory expressions, into „imaginary pictures“; we observe some leitmotifs: the eyes („my empty eyes“– Gheorghe Carligeanu Birtu – „Autumn“), the dawn (N. Florea – „Dawn“), the light („Your eyes will talk with light“ – Manda Mayer), the colors („blue roses“– Moise Ciorba – „Destinies for blue roses“), „white clouds“ (Aurora Strajeru – „You dream at white clouds“), „the blue horizon“ (Dorel Ghemii – „Renewal“), the sun („The sun – a little old man with redhead baldness“ – Anatol Coca – „Look“), the dream (Ioana Fertu – „Dreams and passions“), the flowers (lent lilies, basil, moonflower etc.). We can observe also the frequency of verbs of movement and of the verb „to see“with all its derivates and synonyms (to look, to behold). All the things we could identify and all the things which sustained the joy of „meeting” them prove once more that, in one way, among the persons with visual disability there are also lots of true talents and on the other way that the esthetic attitude, the emotional and cognitive elements can not be detached from the existential aspects, from the experience of life. „The esthetic experience is a particular horizon, qualitatively different, a subtle process of global capitation of the world“(Georg Lukacs, p.72) a synthesis of convergent but also divergent relations between the datum of the experience and the cognitive elements, saturated of feeling and value. „Every art can reflect the objective reality only in its own, particular background (view, hearing, language, gesture), background which is fundamentally linked to the subject, anchored into the human personality [...] Only view and hearing are able to generate such a background.“ (Georg Lukacs, p.625) . „The meeting“ with poets with visual disabilities (but not only, because there are also artists with auditory disabilities), proves that one can make art with 129 Review of Psychopedagogy/Revista de Psihopedagogie, 1 (2008), pp.119-132 ISSN 1584-4919 the help of the „interior view“, because poetry is a way of knowing the Ego’s „adventures“, an ontology of things, but also of a soul wondering among things.

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