{"id":11916,"date":"2014-04-18T12:16:18","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T16:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11916"},"modified":"2014-04-18T12:16:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T16:16:18","slug":"nina-cassian-1924-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/nina-cassian-1924-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Nina Cassian (1924-2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cassian\"<\/a>Saddened to hear of\u00a0Nina Cassian’s passing. \u00a0She\u00a0was a Romanian poet, journalist, film critic and who also translated works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan into Romanian. She published more than fifty books of her own poetry. The New York Times’ obit can be read here<\/a>.
\nBorn into a Jewish family in Gala\u0163i, they lived in Bra\u0219ov between 1926 and 1935, when the family moved to Bucharest, where she went to high school. In 1944 she entered the Literature Department of Bucharest University, but abandoned her studies after one year.\u00a0Cassian travelled to the United States as a\u00a0visiting professor\u00a0in 1985. During her stay in America, a friend of hers,\u00a0Gheorghe Ursu<\/a>, was arrested by the\u00a0Securitate\u00a0for possessing a diary. The diary contained several of Cassian’s poems which satirized\u00a0the Communist regime\u00a0and the authorities thought to be inflammatory. Hence, she decided to remain in the US.\u00a0She was granted asylum\u00a0in the United States, and continued to live in New York City until her death.<\/p>\n

Here’s a poem of her’s first published in Plume<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Purity<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Amazing solitude.
\nOnly me and my cigarette,
\nand this tiny dragonfly
\npainted in Moldavian monastery blue.<\/p>\n

Nothing threatens me,
\nnot even the sun.
\nThe sky is an immense cloud
\nmade of mother-of-pearl.
\nThe lake is an immense cloud
\nmade of mother-of-pearl.
\nI am the mermaid of the lake.
\n\u2013 I am an infinite melody
\nlike the murmur of the rain.<\/p>\n

And I am clean,
\nlike the poem I\u2019m writing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saddened to hear of\u00a0Nina Cassian’s passing. \u00a0She\u00a0was a Romanian poet, journalist, film critic and who also translated works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan into Romanian. She published...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,830,1006],"tags":[1536],"class_list":["post-11916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries","category-poet","category-translator","tag-nina-cassian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11916"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11920,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11916\/revisions\/11920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}