Poetry
Surâsul Hiroshimei
Not translated into English
Eugen Jebeleanu · 1958
Synopsis
A sequence of poems, some thousand lines according to the author, born of his journey to Japan in 1956: at Hiroshima, he says he gauged with his own eyes the extent of the crime, and brought back the photograph of a bridge where strange shadows are the only traces of the beings who were there that day. The poem advances by tableaux, which the critic Eugen Simion describes as a collage of biblical frescoes with images enlarged as in the cinema; one of the most poignant, according to E. C. Ninu, is the chorus of murdered children.
Context
The book appeared in 1958 from the Jeunesse publishing house, illustrated by Florica Cordescu, as Professor Ninu recalls. In an interview given to Gazeta literară in March 1958, the poet said he had conceived it after the second international conference against the A and H bombs, where he sat in the Romanian delegation, and that he saw it as a matter of conscience. According to a1.ro, it has been translated into twenty-eight languages and is still recited in theatres in Latin America. Hubert Juin produced a French adaptation of it in 1960, published by Pierre-Jean Oswald, with drawings by Corneille.
Who it is for
A long poem in tableaux, often recited in public; readable in French in the adaptation by Hubert Juin, with no English version.
Prizes and reception
Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu, quoted by Simone Györfi, saw in its author one of the most alert consciences of the age.
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