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
Leonid Dimov
b. 11 January 1926, Ismail, Bessarabia – 5 December 1987, Bucharest
Poet and translator
Dimov made his tentative first beginnings as a poet while still at lycée, where his teacher and mentor was Șerban Cioculescu. He made his début in the lycée magazine, and it was also thanks to Cioculescu that he would make his official début in Viața Românească decades later, in 1965. After lycée, Dimov successively studied Law, Theology, Mathematics, Biology, Literature, and Philosophy at university, but without completing any degree.
In 1959, he met Dumitru Tsepeneag, with whom he theorised ‘aesthetic oneirism’. In the 1960s, the oneiric group that he and Tsepeneag originated was to attract writers Emil Brumaru, Sorin Titel, Virgil Mazilescu, Daniel Turcea, Iulian Neacșu, Florin Gabrea, and Vintilă Ivănceanu. Two qualities of oneirism were absolutely plain: its rejection of socialist realism, on the one hand, and surrealist automatic writing, on the other.
In 1971, after Ceaușescu issued his ‘July Theses’ on his return from state visits to China and North Korea, the Romanian censors clamped down and the oneiric group, which broke up, with some of its members (Tsepeneag, Gabrea, Ivănceanu) going into exile, while others moved out of the cultural spotlight (Dimov, Mazilescu, Turcea, Titel).The close relationship between Dimov and Tsepeneag and their centrality to the oneirist group brought the poet to the attention of the Securitate, which kept him under surveillance for many years.
Leonid Dimov has found a place in the history of literature as an oneirist poet, a baroque poet, a precursor of postmodernism, a creator of dreams. His poetic art combines a number of essential generative elements: the harnessed unconscious, balanced expression, richness of hallucinatory imagery, the influence of the folk ballad, and universal mythology.
Dimov’s collections of poems – Verses, On the Banks of the Styx, 7 poems, Book of Dreams, which includes the cycles Hypnogogics, 7 prose pieces, At the other end of sleep, and vigil poems, Heavenly Signs, Rondels, Eleusis, Openings, A.B.C., Dialectic of Ages, Performance, and Texts—are nourished by the aesthetic power of the dream, by the magic of a rich imagination, and by impressive breadth of learning, as evinced by their numerous literary influences and references.
