Ana Blandiana is a Romanian lyric poet, essayist, and translator, considered one of her generation’s most significant literary voices.
Ana Blandiana, the pseudonym for Otilia Valeria Coman Rusan, was born on March 25, 1942, in Timişoara, Romania. While still a teenager, she developed her pen name from the name of her mother’s native village in Transylvania. Her father was an Orthodox priest who had been jailed as a dissident. Blandiana published her first poems in the Cluj-based magazine Tribuna while she was attending high school in Oradea. In 1967, Blandiana earned a degree in philology from the University of Cluj-Napoca.
She is one of Romania’s best known poets, prose writers, and translators, having published fourteen to seventeen books of poetry, two volumes of short stories, nine books of essays, and a novel. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages.
The poem read today was chosen by my mother and she read it in Romanian. Her interpretation is volcanic, and I absolutely love that! We had a wonderful time reading together and discussing this poem that speaks so much to use women.
"Tot Eu” — De Ana Blandiana Fața mea mea, nu mai e fața mea, Gura, mai ales, pare a altcuiva, Cineva necunoscut și de vină Pentru privirea străină Pe care ochii mei mi-o aruncă Aproape ca pe-o poruncă. Ca și cum s-ar întreba cine sunt Ascunsă sub parul cărunt. In timp ce eu, tot eu, alt eu, Neiertator și mereu, Mă mir ca de un basm resemnat în eșec Și nu îndrăznesc să înțeleg. “Still Me” — By Ana Blandiana My face — my own face — is no longer my face, The mouth especially seems another person’s, Someone unknown, and somehow to blame For the alien gaze My own eyes cast upon me, Almost as though it were a command. As if they were asking who I am, Hidden beneath greying hair. While I — still I, another I — Unforgiving, incessant, Gaze in wonder as at a fairy tale resigned to failure And do not dare to understand.
