The event features Adrian G Sahlean in a one-man performance of his award-winning meter-and-rhyme English renditions of Romania’s national poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889). The recital is done with background music illustrations recorded by concert pianist Horia Mihail and will include, among others, Eminescu’s masterpiece The Legend of the Evening Star (Legenda Luceafarului). The poem was made into a theatrical-musical-choreographic performance under American director Terrence Christgau Montgomery and twice staged in Manhattan, NY, in 2005 and 2008. Mr. Sahlean’s recital was presented in more than 10 American and Canadian cities, and this is the first performance in Romania.
Author's Recital. Adrian G. Sahlean - 18th of April, 18h30, Romanian Cultural Institute, Aleea Alexandru nr. 38.
Masterclass. Adrian G. Sahlean - 20th of April, 13h00 - 15h00, for graduate students, Romanian Cultural Institute, Aleea Alexandru nr. 38.
Critical reactions and commentaries in the US and Canada.
“Adrian G. Sahlean’s translations are for the English speaking world a great gift. The words of a poet true to the soul of his people and never sentimental, the beautiful poems in these faithful and inspired translations bring a music not yet heard by our American ears, and an awareness of a culture little known or understood. A triumph of light in a modern world shrouded in violence and darkness.”
Terrence Montgomery - Director and Narrator of New York off-Broadway production of “The Evening Star,” 2005 and 2008.
“Like those other great Romantic lyric poets, Pushkin and Heine, Romania's greatest poet, Eminescu, resists translation. But, lo and behold, Adrian George Sahlean has done the seemingly impossible: he has given us the essence of Eminescu in these remarkably fluent, yet still faithful to the original, English versions.”
Maurice Edwards - Writer, Performer, Former Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. (2006)
“…The work accomplished by Adrian George Sahlean is undoubtedly quite a feat. He is not the first who dared to climb the 'steps of perfection' and, I am sure, he will not be the last…On reading it, though, some of his solutions seem impossible to surpass. I consider this most recent translation of the 'Evening Star' a true cultural event which should be welcomed.”
Nina Cassian - Poet, New York, excerptfrom Introduction to “The Legend of the Evening Star”, Prospero Press, 1996.
“Sahlean has chosen the primacy of music. While loyally and almost flawlessly rewriting Eminescu’s prosody, this music’s accomplished task overcomes the translator. It also overcomes the readers, no longer pressed to claim the authorship of their reading: to poems in read, readers in love…. This “untranslatable” poet translates well, in the sense in which the loss of sublimity can be tamed and retained beautifully… Adrian George Sahlean joins the club, en maître…”
Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu - University of Western Ontario, excerpt from “Haunting Hedonism of Sound”, Literary Research Review, 2000.
“To me, these Eminescu translations are a clear winner! Adrian George Sahlean wagered and won a major and exciting bet: first with himself, and then with all scholars and translators who contend that the Romanian national poet’s works are untranslatable.... The result is nothing short of amazing… Sahlean’s translations reveal a profound unity of composition, consistent with Eminescu’s own conception and obvious on reading (and even more so on re-reading)… Sahlean renders ‘the ease and natural of the original composition” with the skill and talent of a virtuoso. For his dream about an Eminescu sound in English did come true in this book: we can and should read his translations aloud, with no fear that the splendor of the original has been lost or diminished… The classic dilemma of any translation, i.e. belles infideles versus laides fideles was solved here in an original, superior manner. Sahlean’s English translations of Eminescu give us belles fideles!”
Dumitru Radu Popa - writer, New York, excerpt from Introduction to “The Legend of the Evening Star”, Prospero Press, 1996:
Adrian George Sahlean
Born in Romania, now a U.S. citizen since 1991, Mr. Sahlean holds Master's Degrees in English & Spanish philology (Bucharest, 1975), psychoanalysis (Boston, 1995) and is a certified clinical psychoanalyst (2002) and a USPTA professional tennis coach (1986). Mr. Sahlean is a published author of literary translations of poetry, short stories, memoirs, plays and fairy tales, and his English renditions from Romanian national poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) brought him several international awards, including the UNESCO-2000-Poet-Of-The-Year Gold Medal, and the LiterArt XXI Grand Prize (2002). The Legend of the Evening Star, his translation of Eminescu’s masterpiece, was twice staged as a theatrical production off-Broadway in 2005 and 2008. Mr. Sahlean himself performed poetry recitals of his translations in a dozen U.S. and Canadian cities over the last decade. In 2015, the volume of essays on literary translation Migalosul Cronogfag (The Painstaking Chronophage) won the prestigious Book-of-the-Year award from the Romanian Writers Union.
Mr. Sahlean taught Italian language skills to both graduate and undergraduate voice students as visiting faculty at the Longy School of Music (2010-2013). This was an extension of his passion for music, as illustrated by lifelong performance activities: TV children’s choir, electric band drummer, founder of ‘a Capella’ choir, classical guitar performer (Romania) and – the last two decades – folk and bel canto singing.
Mr. Sahlean in the co-founder and president of Global Arts (2005) (www.globalartsnpo.org), a non-profit organization promoting Romanian literature, art and music to the American public at large. He is a member of the Romanian Writer's Union, American Literary Translators Association, American Romanian Academy, and Society of Modern Psychoanalysts. He lives outside Boston, MA.
