{"title":"Books by Ana Blandiana","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781780375403","title":"The Shadow of Words","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAna 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.\u003c\/strong\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Shadow of Words\u003c\/em\u003e covers Blandiana's early collections published from 1964 to 1981, as well as including uncollected poems from that period which only appeared in anthologies. It follows \u003cem\u003eMy Native Land A4 \u003c\/em\u003e(2014), \u003cem\u003eThe Sun of Hereafter - Ebb of the Senses\u003c\/em\u003e (2017) and \u003cem\u003eFive Books\u003c\/em\u003e (2021) in completing Bloodaxe's presentation of Blandiana's collected poems to date in English translation. She published these poems during the brief period of political thaw of Romania's communist regime, when aestheticism took on a more subversive role, reaffirming the autonomy of the poetic word and freeing it from the stultifying demands of propagandist proletarian art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn her 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 override 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303836463477,"sku":"9781780375403","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781780375403_4ff82786-874f-4ca6-a98f-c1952843f0a5.jpg?v=1786025021"},{"product_id":"9781780373843","title":"The Sun of Hereafter • Ebb of the Senses","description":"Ana Blandiana is one of Romania's foremost poets, a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, and now her country's strongest candidate for the Nobel Prize. A prominent opponent of the Ceausescu 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 an ethical consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian government. This new translation by Viorica Patea and Paul Scott Derrick combines her two collections, The Sun of Hereafter (2000) and Ebb of the Senses (2004), both written after the fall of the Iron Curtain while Blandiana was actively and selflessly involved in the public sphere as President of the Civic Alliance (1990-2001), a non-political organisation that made possible Romania's integration into the European Union. These two books mark a turning point in Blandiana's poetic evolution: they lead towards a new conception of poetry as a reflection on being that culminates in My Native Land A4 (first published in Romania in 2010 and published in English by Bloodaxe in 2014). After 1989, the motifs of her poetry remain the same but they acquire a more universal dimension. For Blandiana, the writer is less a creator than a witness of the world she inhabits. She believes that poetry records the experience of one's time and insists that it is 'not a series of events, but a sequence of visions'. Blandiana's poetry oscillates between the sensual perception of the world and a nostalgia for transcendence. Enigmatic definitions alternate with a series of coded questions charged with melancholic gravity. In fact, her poetry could be seen as a quest for definitions reached through a series of questions. Her poems describe the degradation of humanistic values and the different ways in which the individual is threatened. They express a yearning for a state of primordial purity and an awareness of destructive forces which the self must confront.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304197402997,"sku":"9781780373843","price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781780373843_c648eb4b-4c94-47b2-8181-188e2f4d24f2.jpg?v=1786024989"},{"product_id":"9781780375380","title":"Five Books","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis new translation combines five of Ana Blandiana's previous collections, three of protest poems from the 1980s followed by her two collections of love poetry.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs one of Romania's foremost poets, and a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, Ana Blandiana's poetry has become symbolic of an ethical consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian governments. \u003cp\u003eThe poems of \u003ci\u003ePredator Star\u003c\/i\u003e (1985) and \u003ci\u003eThe Architecture of Waves\u003c\/i\u003e (1990) chronicle a convulsed history and pose the question of how to resist the terror of history. \u003ci\u003eClock without Hours\u003c\/i\u003e (2014) marks a return to rhyme, as Blandiana attempts a courageous renovation of traditional verse forms. Her fiercely militant voice - that helped inaugurate the postmodern idiom in Romanian poetry in 1984 - has modulated over time into a new tone of forgiveness and renunciation, expressed in meditations on the fragility and vulnerability of being.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe has also written two collections of love poems which rank among the most beautiful in contemporary Romanian poetry - \u003ci\u003eOctober, November, December\u003c\/i\u003e (1972) and \u003ci\u003eVariations on a Given Theme \u003c\/i\u003e(2018) - the second of these composed after the death of her husband, Romulus Rusan, in 2016.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA prolific and expansive poet, Ana Blandiana constantly re-invents herself. Her work ultimately reflects on universal issues, on human existence itself in our 21st-century consumer society.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304585179509,"sku":"9781780375380","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781780375380_64b230be-c1e6-4a22-9f42-b2342ed2c763.jpg?v=1786025020"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-ana-blandiana.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}