Poetry
Joc secund
Not translated into English
Ion Barbu · 1930
Synopsis
The poem that opens the collection and gives it its title serves as a profession of faith: poetry there becomes a second game, a purer one, a reflection of the world rather than the world itself, according to Iulian Boldea. There follow cycles composed from 1921 to 1929: hermetic poems, the Uvedenrode cycle and, to close, that of Isarlîk, an imaginary city which bears, according to Maria Movilă, the name of a Turkish town built on the site of Troy. Boldea also describes a ballad that a minstrel tells on leaving a wedding: King Crypto, a mushroom, and Enigel, a young Lapp girl who has set out from the pole towards the sun.
Context
The book appeared in 1930 and brought together some thirty-five of the roughly one hundred poems the author published. Several pieces had first appeared in journals, such as the ballad of Crypto, published in Revista română in 1924. Ioana Em. Petrescu, cited by Maria Movilă and by Alexandru Burlacu, distinguishes five stages in the work: the cycles gathered here all predate the volume, and the texts after 1930 are only extensions or paraphrases of them. The poem Isarlîk carries a dedication to the universe of Anton Pann.
Who it is for
A slim collection of difficult poems, between geometry and Balkan fable, in Romanian; no French translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
A landmark of Romanian modernist poetry according to the Romanian Literature Wiki; its reception was enthusiastic.