Mircea Cărtărescu is a Romanian poet, prose writer, publicist, fantasy novelist and postmodernism theoretician. He is considered by the critics the most important poet of the 1980's post-modern generation. I remember when we first read one of his poems in class: "Poema chiuvetei" ("The Poem of the Sink"): It felt so different, it was (to an adolescent's mind) unusually comical and, well... different, to be taken seriously. It was about the impossible love between an object of household use (the sink) and one of the cosmic plane (a star). If you understand Romanian, you can read the "Poem of the Sink" and a Romanian interpretation here.
But then, our wonderful teacher taught us how to read postmodern poetry (interestingly enough, she had graduated from the same class as the writer; I think that, because she used to be one of our first and greatest mentors, our class carries the postmodern signature, as it was conveyed through her words, chosen topics, writings, and discussions.):
The avant-garde of the 80s generation brings for the first time a change of cultural paradigm to Romanian literature, by adopting the Anglo-Saxon model and breaking the long tradition of French and German literary influences. Postmodern literature is characterized by its play with already existing forms, themes and motifs. It is a "combinatory art", a collage of literary references, a parody of models, a play with contexts and irony and a dialogue between forms of different epochs and styles. The postmodern writer is conscious that everything has been already written, that the only thing left for him/her is the play with cultural fragments, which he/she re-semantisizes (source). Thus, the first poem that we had read by Cărtărescu, was an intelligent play with the original poem "Luceafarul" by Romania's genius and possibly most prominent poet, Mihai Eminescu (read here some translated versions of Eminescu's works).
The translation of his 1989 novel "Nostalgia", writes Andrei Codrescu, "introduces to English a writer who has always had a place reserved for him in a constellation that includes the Brothers Grimm, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Milorad Pavic, to mention just a few." Readers opening the pages of "Nostalgia" should brace themselves for a verbal tidal wave of the imagination that will wash away previous ideas of what a novel is or ought to be. Although each of its five chapters is separate and stands alone, a thematic, even mesmeric harmony finds itself in children's games, the music of the spheres, humankind's primordial myth-making, the origins of the universe, and in the dilapidated tenement blocks of an apocalyptic Bucharest during the years of communist dictatorship (source).
Read one of my favourite stories ("Roulette") from one of my favourite books ("Nostalgia") in English here.
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