Emil Brumaru

From his first collections of poetry, published in the 1970s, Emil Brumaru demonstrated great imaginative consistency and a skill at versification that seemed neither to diminish nor increase over the first few decades of his literary career.

It was not until The Infernal Comedy (2005) that Brumaru focused on new directions: the female body, the pleasures of physical love, albeit without descending to pornography, instead maintaining what might be likened to an albeit highly passionate virginal coyness. Brumaru’s early poems are close to the lyricism of poets like Ion Pillat and Benjamin Fundoianu. He is interested in provincial atmosphere, in markets abounding with fruit and vegetables, subjects couched in poetic lines that are original, limpid, flowing.

Even if he cannot be regarded as one of the canonical poets of Romanian literature, Brumaru is undoubtedly one of the language’s most consistent writers. He is a mannerist closely focused on his own thematic register, one seldom explored by other Romanian writers. Although varying little over the course of his poetic career, Brumaru’s lyricism is musically and formally suggestive, full of stylistic embellishments, evincing both discreetness and grandeur.

Brumaru’s language represents one of the most original modes of lyrical expression to be found in Romanian literature and has a unique savour all of its own.