The Shadow of Words

Translated by Paul Scott Derrick & Viorica Patea

Ana Blandiana is one of Romania’s foremost poets, a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, and now one of her country’s strongest candidates for the Nobel Prize. A prominent opponent of the Ceaușescu regime, Blandiana became known for her daring, outspoken poems as well as for her courageous defence of ethical values. Over the years, her works have become the symbol of a moral consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian government. 

The Shadow of Words covers Blandiana’s early collections published from 1964 to 1981, during the brief period of political thaw of Romania’s communist regime, and includes uncollected poems from that period which only appeared in anthologies. In these poems aestheticism takes on a subversive role, reaffirming the autonomy of the poetic word and freeing it from the stultifying demands of propagandist proletarian art.

In these early poems, Blandiana’s voice articulates a pure and vibrant spiritual language of unmistakable ethical clarity, calling for moral regeneration in the face of indifference. Their ethical idealism and steadfastness overrides the many masks of degradation. These youthful books announce from the outset the sense of responsibility and faith in the survival of the collective soul that has always characterised Blandiana’s poetry.

Starting with The Third Sacrament (1969) her poetry reads as a confession in which personal experience is imbued with metaphysical significance. The desire for the absolute and for purity engulfs the self,who, weary of moral asceticism, seeks solace in sleep and returns tothe organic, seeking integration with cosmic rhythms. The poems of this collection display a notable degree of candour and sincerity. Blandiana’s visionary imagination construes a mythical framework with strong Platonic accents. She offers ingenious versions of known myths which she often rewrites in the guise of humorous children’s games.

Blandiana’s work focuses on exploring the unknowable mystery, not to unravel it, but rather to protect and preserve it as a manifestationof beauty. The poet portrays herself as one whose work is informed by an intuitive sense of mystery engaged in the depths of being. This collection follows My Native Land A4 (2014), The Sun of Hereafter • Ebb of the Senses (2017) and Five Books (2021), completing Bloodaxe’s presentation of Blandiana’s collected poems to date in English translation.

'The Romanian Ana Blandiana is one of Europe’s greatest living poets, and she’s well served by this substantial volume containing five previously untranslated collections. Ranging across her writing life, they create a layered portrait of a complex yet consistent poetic identity.' – Fiona Sampson, The Guardian, on Five Books

'... one of Europe's most important living poets.  Blandiana is not concerned with elegant artifice. Her poems are mostly short in line and in length. And the voice, one of the most remarkable features of her work, is simple, calm and intimate... Yet that voice is capable of surprising and resonant shifts of focus that at times produce brilliant perspectives on her political situation, on her efforts to understand what connections are possible to spiritual forces, and late in her career on the various ways love can pervade life.' - Charles Altieri, The London Magazine, on Five Books

'This is writing from the front line, visceral and powerful... while the poetry in the later books is more lyrical and reflective, celebrating ''freedom andsolidarity'. An invaluable resource for the library to supplement history and politics courses with poetry written in extremis.' – Frank Startup, The School Librarian, on Five Books

‘Blandiana is, without doubt, one of the most important poets in Europe. So far, she has published sixteen volumes of poetry and several other books. Five Books is her fourth volume in English, and, as the title suggests, consists of five collections… I admire the decision to put together sets of poems that are so different in character: the political ones, which – by their very nature – are more public, louder, outspoken, sitting right next to the meditative, very private, intimate even, love poetry. This creates a refreshing, contrasted image of the poet within one book.’ – Anna Blasiak, European Literature Network

‘In the tradition of Anna Akhmatova and Václav Havel, Blandiana bears witness to eastern European history while also offering visionary and meditative verse in the spirit of Emily Dickinson and Rainer Maria Rilke... Thanks to Derrick and Patea’s faithful rendering of Blandiana’s formal innovations in light of the poems’ evolving context, Five Books will ensure Blandiana’s legacy as a poet with international significance.’ – J. Rhett Forman, World Literature Today

'Blandiana is a pure lyricist, focused entirely on the event of how imagination finds words and rhythms that make certain mental experiences memorable. Her poems characteristically achieve strange precisions by having pervasive metaphors unfold her sense of "sacred void" as negative plenitude.' – Charles Altieri, UC at Berkeley