2022
Aplauze pentru poet • Ion Minulescu
Poezii: “Epilog sentimental”, “Ultima oră”, “Romanța tineretii”, “Ploaia Sfântului Ilie”, “Acuarela”, “Peisaj umed”, “Cântecul nebunului”, “Păpuşa automată”, “Celei care pleaca”, “Romanța celor 3 romanțe”, “Romanța retrospectiva”, “Romanța meschină”, “Sinuciderea unui anonim”, “Fetiţa din Făgădău”
Recită actorii Victor Rebengiuc, Rodica Mandache, Mihai Mălaimare
Filmări realizate în noiembrie 2021, la Sala ArCuB Bucureşti
Emil Botta
b. 15 September 1911, Adjud – d. 24 July 1977, Bucharest
Poet, prose writer, actor
At the age of fifteen, Emil Botta ran away from home to become an actor. He went on to attend the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, Bucharest, from 1929 to 1932. He became an actor at the National Theatre in Bucharest after many years treading the boards of provincial theatres, where he gave exceptional performances as Werther, Iago, Macbeth, Uncle Vanya, and Jon of Năpasta, among others.
He made his début as a poet in Tudor Arghezi’s Parrot Papers in 1929, publishing his poem ‘Final Stranza’. Emil Botta was part of a intellectual group called ‘The Ship of Failures’, which also produced philosopher Emil Cioran and dramatist Eugène Ionesco. He was a favourite of the Criterion magazine generation, with major Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, and Nicolae Steinhardt creating a veritable cult of Emil Botta the poet.
He is the author of dark, existential poems whose characters come together to form an idiosyncratic mythology of death, in keeping with the interbellum Romanian iteration of Lebensphilosophie. He is a poet of masks, whose lyric ‘I’ reveals itself through different character, resulting in a comedy of death and helplessness. In 1937, the Royal Foundations for Literature and Art published his award-winning first collection, Darkened April. The highly original tone of the collection won critical acclaim. Vladimir Streinu saw in it ‘signs of a new poetry’ at a time in which the established interbellum poets were reaching their apogee. Darkened April was followed by At an Inlet of Heaven (1943), The Friday Cycle (1971), and An Insatiable Longing (1976). His first prose pieces were collected in The Idler, published in 1938.
Emil Botta wrote relatively little poetry. But his poetic space cannot be mistaken for any other. Botta toiled in virtual anonymity on a poetic construct of the first rank, to which he brought all the stage properties of the world’s great spiritual theatres. For, Emil Botta is a great artist not only in his words, but above all in his vision. Emil Botta was the very figure of the Poet.
