Monday, December 28, 2015

Essay about a poem sent to Weekly Romanian Kukai no. 423



Christmas concert –
in the storage closet the ballad
of a little cricket

Cristian D.



The supreme elegance of the poem is felt by its relaxed reading. Nothing is forced or difficult in the formulation. It is like reading while riding a vehicle some extremely simple announcements made specifically for not giving you the work of deciphering and directly saying (only) what there is to say. Without pretensions or unnecessary precious or parasitic words.

Joining the two parts of the poem is also, apparently, random. It was just accidentally that two phrases, otherwise trivial, happened to be side by side. That is a haiku’s refinement, to give the impression that things were not planned, that behind them there is no intent. To give you food for thought without seeming to do so deliberately.

The only remark - in the storage closet accompanies, locating it, the cricket’s performance. About the Christmas concert we do not know more, but it has a certain monumentality and leads us to think about a room matched to the occasion, and to imagine an orchestra accompanied, perhaps, by choirs. But, especially, the feast which is associated to it and that, most likely, occasions it.

In the closet - in an annex where the things we discard as junk are stored. There, the cricket finds abode and it plays, penitently, its monotonous ballad. It is part, together with its song, of the things we easily get rid of because they are outdated, anachronistic. Just like in Romanian poet’s Topârceanu's ballad, the cricket is no longer topical, it has become obsolete.

Henceforth, the symbolism of the two events is always full of contrasts. Celebration sad sad isolation. Grandeur and decay. Conceit and humility. Civilization of the artificial and sobriety of simplicity. Fastuosity and austere naturalism.

However, this getting rid of all these things also sounds like a desire to get rid of something that upsets and disturbs, which stands around us just as a reprimanding embarrassment. Making our flawless lives dirty.

(Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

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