Poetry
Flori de mucigai
Not translated into English
Tudor Arghezi · 1931
Synopsis
A cycle of poems from prison, written for the most part just after the author's detention, according to Michael Impey. The opening poem, which gives the book its title, presents these verses as traced without divine help, with the nails of the left hand; the ones that follow give voice to the world of thieves, prisoners and outcasts, in an unadorned language. Impey hears in them a multitude of voices in which the poet's own is barely distinguishable; Ștefan Vlăduțescu notes the symbols of the nail, of darkness and of the wall, and the figure of the prisoner become myth.
Context
The collection appeared in 1931, four years after the poet's first book of verse. According to Michael Impey, the reception was on the whole favourable, in Romania as elsewhere; a few voices were indignant in the name of morality, and people wondered how far Baudelaire's influence went beyond the title. Post-war critics linked the book to the aesthetics of ugliness that the poet had formulated as early as 1927; Nicolae Balotă saw in it an anti-lyrical poetry. According to Mirel Anghel, Nicolae Iorga and Ion Barbu, his harshest detractors, laid down their arms after its publication.
Who it is for
Verse in Romanian; in French, only selected pieces exist, in Luc-André Marcel's anthology published by Seghers in 1963.
Prizes and reception
Ștefan Vlăduțescu regards it as the least Eminescian collection in all of Romanian poetry.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.