Lacustrine
So many nights I hear the rain,
I hear the matter cry again…
I’m lonely, and my thoughts may drain
Towards the dwellings lacustrine.
And it’s like sleeping on wet floorboards,
A wave keeps hitting me’n the back —
I shudder in my sleep and reckon
I did not pull the drawbridge back.
An historical void is stretching,
I find myself through the time gaps…
And I feel like because of raining,
The heavy pilots will collapse.
So many nights I hear the rain,
Shuddering, waiting yet again…
I’m lonely, and my thoughts may drain
Towards the dwellings lacustrine.
.
Lacustra
De-atâtea nopţi aud plouând,
Aud materia plângând…
Sunt singur, şi mă duce un gând
Spre locuinţele lacustre.
Şi parcă dorm pe scânduri ude,
În spate mă izbeşte-un val –
Tresar prin somn şi mi se pare
Că n-am tras podul de la mal.
Un gol istoric se întinde,
Pe-aceleaşi vremuri mă găsesc…
Şi simt cum de atâta ploaie
Piloţii grei se prăbuşesc.
De-atâtea nopţi aud plouând,
Tot tresărind, tot aşteptând…
Sunt singur, şi mă duce-un gând
Spre locuinţele lacustre.
.
Translator’s Note
The poet George Bacovia makes a special figure in the context of Romanian literature through the different, even contradictory way in which he was received by literary critics, proving abundantly that his creation remains an “open work”.
George Bacovia’s poetry was considered simple, sincere, naive, but also theatrical, mannerist, artificial. As for the literary and artistic currents to which it belongs, it has been included in decadent poetry, but also in symbolism, expressionism and even in that of avant-garde absurdity. All these critical judgments emphasize, in fact, its great originality and the power to transform in time, anticipating the new profile of contemporary literature:
“There, where there is no one,
Not even shadows,
there to where
multitudes of years go,and the din of the day,
and the silence of the night …
Where all things are known …
There, say travelers,
Only outbursts of fire
Denounce themselves
dismally, metallically,
From minute to minute.
There, where there is no one
and no more need
For any words.”
(Sic transit)
With a debut under the sign of symbolism (the volume “Lead”), Bacovia introduces motifs and elements of symbolist decoration, which he will resume in the following volumes: dusk, autumn, solitude, rain, drunkenness, crows; the salon, the lonely park, the deserted city. To this frame are added elements belonging to the semantic musical field: hand organ, keyboard, fanfare, which induce a gloomy atmosphere.
The individualizing marks that are imposed from the beginning of these poems are artificiality and neurotic sensitivity. The favorite theme, the obsession, is transfigured through almost ubiquitous symbols: the lead, the crows, the rain, the dusk, the coffin, etc.), to which are added chromatic elements – purple, gray, white, black, yellow), all of which have the role of to imagine landscapes that have their correspondent in the inner state of the poet.
All the poems of George Bacovia are, in fact, pieces from a poet’s portrait, a being suffocated by the inner emptiness, an insignificant figure, oppressed by illness, loneliness, despair and the specter of imminent disappearance. Representative of a declining humanity, that of the twentieth century, the Romanian poet fully communicates the phenomenon of dehumanization and the inability to communicate.
