Lucian Blaga

Lucian Blaga is one of Romania's principal poets and philosophers. Although there are translations and studies of his work published in French and Italian, there has so far been little knowledge of him in the English-speaking world. This web site is a personal effort, with the co-operation of colleagues in Romania, to supply that lack.

But this site will not exclude publications and events relating to Blaga in other languages. I can read French, Spanish and Portuguese, can take a stab at Italian, and am learning Romanian (slowly).

My own interest in Blaga is primarily in his philosophy but this site will attempt to cover all aspects of his work. I came across Blaga in 1995 when, out of the blue, I received a notice of a conference to be held in Mangalia in commemoration of the centennary of his birth. I knew nothing of him but the rest of the programme seemed interesting, and so I decided to go. I returned to Romania in 1998, when as well as staying in Bucharest, I also visited Cluj, where Blaga was Professor of the Philosophy of Culture before being dismissed by the Communist government and made a librarian instead. (The Library of Cluj University has since been renamed in memory of him.) I also visited Blaga's birthplace in Lâncrâm which is now the Blaga museum.

I returned again to Bucharest in September 2005 for the 2-day conference in honour of Blaga: 'The philosophy of Culutral Convergence' held by the Romanian Academy of Sciences. The papers will be published by the Academy.

Over the first week-end in May, an annual Blaga festival is held in Cluj, likewise one in Sibiu in November.

I have assisted Dr Angela Botez, of the Institute of Philosophy of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, with an English translation of a revised version of a recent anthology of Blaga's philosophy, with some poems and extracts from other works, which is now available on CD:

Order

"Caliogram: Self-Portrait"

1895 Born (May 9th) as the ninth son of the parish priest (Romanian Orthodox Church) of the village of Lâncrâm, south of Alba Iulia in Transylvannia, then in Hungary.

1908 The death of his father leaves the family destitute and Blaga has to leave secondary school, but later registers as an external student.

1910 Publishes his first poems.

1914 Publishes his first philosophical article, 'Notes on intuition in Bergson'. To avoid service in the Austro-Hungarian army, attends theological classes at the Theological Institute of Sibiu, graduating in 1917.

1918 Begins to study philosophy at the University of Vienna.

1920 Awarded his Ph. D. with a thesis, Kultur und Erkenntnis. Marries. Returns to Rornania. Publishes more poems and also begins to publish plays.

1922 Publishes Culture and Cognition (thesis).

1926 Goes as press attache to the Rornanian legation in Warsaw.

1927 Is transferred to Prague. Dorli, his daughter, is born.

1932 Transferred to Vienna.

1937 Gives maiden speech, Eulogy to the Romanian Village, at Romanian Academy.

1938 Transferred back to Bucharest and then to Lisbon.

Returns to Romania as Professor of the Philosophy of Culture (a chair specially created for him) at the University of Cluj.

1947 Romanian Students' Union publishes first part of his course, On Philosophical Cognition.

1948 Lithographed publication of his course Anthropological Aspects.

1949 Is dismissed from his chair by the Communist regimé and appointed librarian of the Cluj branch of the library of the Romanian Academy. Out of favour, he publishes only translations until 1960.

1956. Nominated for the Nobel Prize on the proposal of Bazil Munteanu (France) and Rosa del Conte (Italy), he was on the point of getting the award when the communist government in Bucharest sent emissaries to Sweden to protest against his nomination with false political allegations.

1961 Dies of cancer. Buried at Lâncrâm.

1962 Blaga's works begin to be published again, many edited by his daughter.

Poems

1919 Poems of Light

1921 The Prophet's Footsteps

1924 In the Great Passage

1929 In Praise of Sleep

1933 At the Watershed

1938 At the Courtyard of Yearning

1943 Unsuspected Steps--New Poems

1982-3 Posthumous Poems

Plays

1921 Zamolxis, A Pagan Mystery

1923 Whirling Waters

1925 Daria, The Deed, Resurrection

1927 Master-Builder Manole

1930 The Children's Crusade

1934 Avram Iancu

1944 Noah's Ark

Philosophical works

1924 The Philosophy of Style.

1925 The Original Phenomenon and The Facets of a Century

1931 The Dogmatic Aeon

1933 Luciferian Knowledge

1934 Transcendental Censorship

1936 Horizon and Style and The Mioritic Space

1937 The Genesis of Metaphor and the Meaning of Culture

1939 Art and Value

1940 The Divine Differentials

1942 Religion and Spirit and Science and Creation

1943 The Trilogy of Knowledge (The Dogmatic Aeon, Luciferian Knowledge, Transcendent Censorship: in 1983 On Philosophical Cognition and Experiment and the Mathematical Spirit added by his daughter)

1944 The Trilogy of Culture (Horizon and Style, The Mioritic Space, The Genesis of Metaphor and the Meaning of Culture)

1946 The Trilogy of Values (Science and Creation, Magical Thinking and Religion, Art and Value)

1959 Historical Existence

1966 Romanian Thought in Transylvania in the 18th Century

1968 Horizons and Stages

1969 Experiment and the Mathematical Spirit

1972 Sources (essays, lectures, articles)

1974 On Philosophical Cognition

1977 Philosophical Essays

1983 The Cosmological Triology (The Divine Differentials, Anthropological Aspects, Historical Existence)

Other Prose Works

1919 Stones for My Temple, aphorisms

1945 Discoblus, aphorisms

1965 The Chronicle and Song of Ages, memoirs

1977 The Élan of the Island, aphorisms

1990 Charon's Ferry, novel

THREE POEMS

Jesus and Magdalene

Jesus hied to the village with his thoughts roaming

"Sin itself lay in her eyes

and only death

Lay in her hand and in its burning clasp-

And yet, I cannot understand,a ray playing in her eyes

Cried to me and, dazzling, called:

God is within me too!"

Jesus hied to the village and the sun to dusk...

Jesus was dreaming-

And his eyes dwelt for a moment

On the smooth

Fens that were hiding the Jordan behind the reeds...

A wave of kindness drowned his face in a minute:

"Oh, the divine sun, it blinds you with its light

E'en when it reflects itself onto the mud.."

Lot

I have seen many and sin-breeding deeds

profaning the light and the wind,

and misunderstood customs, and fire games in the city.

Naked people have I seen in rusty-copper green lakes

kissing silvery swans.

I have seen, fear-stricken, in front of the gate,

Girls dancing their whiteness off

for long nailed voivodes-

and I have seen priests in linen clothes intoxicating

the beggars with the wine the dead have been washed with.

I have seen women setting their seed on fire

their mission cast between two eternities like an insult,

their breasts-ripe fruit with no milk, no milk within,

their breath killing bees and herbs.

I have seen transparent guests on the shore of blood:

children who will be delivered but are not desired

(if you stop your ears up

you can hear through spheres their bitter thirst,

their dumb murmur at the world's windows,

and their song of relief

when they find entrance

in trees, dogs, and in birds).

I have heard many and sin-breeding words

profaning the light and the wind.

Alas, sons of the cities, you think that

no one has seen the sun ever,

and that clear light is nothing but a tale.

Your questions stir the depths,

and you hurt with stones the voiceless eyes of the wells,

but you cannot guess from their silence

the unexpected ending.

Alas, sons of the cities, in any deed

you deny the Earth its heavenly descent.

You haven't feasted the angels come with the Eucharist,

you haven't cleaned their dusty wings,

but scolded them instead-cruelly plucking their feathers

and bedizened in them, you dance and dance

around the golden neighbourhood of the accursed calves.

It will not be seven days, it will not be seven days.

Woe is me that I have to wait.

My flocks of sheep and my live coals

will sink into the sea.

I can hear my dogs barking from the bottom of the sea.

Alas, my God, for I have to hold my words

when I strip naked.

My woman shall turn into a salt pillar

when looking back.

Psalm

(vol. "The Great Transition")

Always grief to me have been your concealed solitude

But God, what was I to do?

I played with you as a child and

Let imagination take you to pieces like a toy.

Then the untamed grew stronger within,

my songs died away,

and without ever having felt you close

I lost you for ever

in dust, in fire, in air, and on waters.

From sunrise to sunset

I am all clay and suffering.

You have confined yourself in the sky as in a coffin.

Oh, weren't you a closer kin to death

than you are to life,

you would speak to me. Right from where you are,

within the earth or within the tale- you would speak to me.

Show yourself among the thorns here, God,

so that I should know what you want of me.

Shall I catch in the air the poisoned spear

thrown by the other from the depths to wound you beneath your wings?

Or there is nothing that you want of me?

You are the mute, still identity

(a round itself is a),

and you ask for nothing. Not even for my prayers.

Look, the stars are coming into the world

along with my questioning sorrows.

Look, it is night with no windows outside.

What am I going to do from now on, God?

In you I take off my mortal flesh. I take it off

as if it were a coat left on the way.

Translated by Liliana Mihalachi, University of Suceava (Romania), 4th year of study (Philology, English-Romanian)

In marea trecere/The Great Transition, bilingual ed., trans. Roy MacGregor-Hastie, Ed. Eminescu, Bucharest, 1975

Poemele luminii/Poems of Light, bilingual ed., Ed. Minerva, Bucharest, 1975.

Some of Blaga's poems have also appeared in anthologies of Romanian poetry in translation, and in issues of the Romanian Review (Foreign Languages Press Group 'Romania', Piata Presei Libere, nr 1, BP 33-28, Bucharest; fax: 00 40 1 311 05 26), especially:

Year L, 1995, Nos. 3-4.

Philosophy

No complete book has yet been translated, but extracts and articles in English on Blaga's philosophy have been published in

Romanian Review, especially:

Year XL, 1985, pp. 72-90, extracts;

Year L, 1995, Nos. 3-4, extracts and articles;

Revue Roumaine de Philosophie (Editura Academiei Romane, Calea Septembrie nr 13, 76117, Bucharest)

Vol. 37, Nos. 1-2, 1993, article;

Vol. 39, Nos.1-2, 1995, extracts with articles;

Vol. 40, Nos. 1-2, 1996, articles;

Appraisal (20 Ulverscroft Rd, Loughborough, Leics. LE11 3PU, England):

Vol. 1 No. 3, March 1997), extracts (with poems) and articles;

Articles in other issues: CD of all back issues available.

A Blaga Anthology (philosophy, poems, aphorisms and other extracts) is available on CD.

Michael S. Jones: The Metaphysics of Religion: Lucian Blaga and Contemporary Philosophy, Fairleigh Dickinson U. P., 2006.

The first study of Blaga in English. Contains a general introduction to most of Blaga's philosophy, and then focuses upon his treatment of religion.