Poetry
Descântece de alb și negru
Not translated into English
Dumitru Matcovschi · 1969
Synopsis
A collection of poems, the author's fourth book, built, as its title announces, on the opposition of white and black, of good and evil. Laden with national symbols, the verses assert the poet's Romanian identity, argue with the regime and celebrate a joy of living stylised in the manner of folklore; at the centre stands the "strop de casă", the little inner house where the poet feels free, the motif of the poem "Mi-am făcut un strop de casă".
Context
The collection appeared in 1969 and vanished from the bookshops within days: Soviet censorship judged it subversive and withdrew it from circulation; it has never been reissued in its original form. The following year its author had to leave the editorial staff of Cultura for ideological reasons, and Melodica, in 1971, rewrote these incantations. Matcovschi later became one of the figures of the national revival in Bessarabia, and Eugen Doga and Mihai Dolgan set his poems to music. The book has been translated into neither French nor English.
Who it is for
To discover a poetry that, in Soviet Moldavia, dared to voice a Romanian identity and paid for it at once.
Prizes and reception
The book was banned as soon as it came out; in 2009, Alexandru Burlacu wrote that it was not censored but simply "arrested".