by Simona Sora; Iulian Tănase
Dear friends,The cultural portal LiterNet (http://www.liternet.ro) is glad to let you know of the release of a new e-book published by LiterNet: 49. Pentru Gellu Naum / For Gellu Naum (volume coordinated by Iulian Tănase, bilingual edition) From rhymes and games, events and silences a book was born; a book that even its own coordinator places under the sign of objective chance. There are people who had to be there, others who wrote by chance (but a significant, far from ordinary chance) and others who did not write, though? The only thing that matters in the destiny of this 37 signatures' dedication about friendship-love, about the vital and mortal enthusiasm, about the times when the intransigency had a meaning, about lost encounters and "understanding right through the heart," about "pisigaleria naumiensis" and "the great night inside the day," about "furious clowns" and "mute angels fallen from paradise" is the presence of the departed friend. As in a premonitory poem of Gellu Naum included in The Wedded Knife volume: "We should know from the start that he still lives under the sky / forever showing the rigor of not a whit insignificant limits." Simona Sora While coordinating this anthology, I realized once more how loved Gellu Naum was and is by people so different from one another but so similar in their love for the discoverer of Zenobia. All thirty-seven authors of this book greeted with joy the idea of putting together a collective volume dedicated to Gellu Naum. Andrei Codrescu sent his poem the next day after he received the invitation; so did Joachim Sartorius. In a letter to Lyggia Naum, Herta Müller expressed her joy at being able "to participate in the book for Gellu Naum." Mircea Dinescu remembered in 2002 why he was afraid of Gellu Naum in 1985. Sasha Vlad who, in collaboration with James Brook, translated Zenobia into English, was among the first to send not a text but a polylogogram; a visual game that shows us that the boundaries between the words "Lyggia" and "Gellu" are nonexistent when the horizontality (of sight) is synonymous with the verticality (of the object). As for the boundaries between Lyggia and Gellu Naum, they never existed; a well-known fact for those who know their story. By all indications, this anthology seems to be a group photo that reunites Gellu Naum's closest friends. The photo is undoubtedly representative, although not necessarily exhaustive. If someone didn't fit in the frame, only objective chance is to blame. I think that this book would have been to Gellu Naum's liking and that he would have especially rejoiced to see older or newer friends gathered around him. Perhaps he would have scolded us a little for writing so nicely about him, but he wouldn't have been angry at us and would have still loved us. I also think that he would have recognized himself in the mirror of this book because, ultimately, its true author is not us, the ones present in these pages, but him, the old young surrealist who is so present in our reality and surreality.Iulian Tănase
by Simona Sora; Iulian Tănase
by Simona Sora; Iulian Tănase