Passionate poetry readers, two young actors – Anda Tămășanu and Ciprian Ciuciu – thought of bringing to the stage, with… dramatic means, some of Ana Blandiana’s poems, poems dedicated to her husband, the writer Romulus Rusan, on the ten years since his disappearance. A gift… Little said… some of the poems, because the script of the show sums up a generous poetic universe, the choice of poems bearing the imprint of the natural subjectivity of the performers. The two actors were joined by the literary secretaries Florina Dometi (coordinator), Ramona Nemeș (video) and the artist Khaleea/Alexandra Koszeghi (music). The videoart part is signed by Ciprian Ciuciu.

It is not the first time that the poems of Ana Blandiana, the poet so beloved by her city's residents, have been recited on the stage of the Theater, today called Regina Maria. In November 1983, the extraordinary show "OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER" took place, directed by Sergiu Savin. The actress Cristina Șchiopu recited, and the great actress Leopoldina Bălănuță was invited. In joint recitals, bringing together important Romanian poets, Ana Blandiana is always in the vicinity of poets Lucian Blaga, Nichita Stănescu, Marin Sorescu, Alexandru Andrițoiu, Romulus Vulpescu, Mircea Dinescu.

To my natural question, posed to the two actors: why Ana Blandiana, what impressed them, so young, from reading the dramatic-meditative verses related to death, disappearance, final departures, sad separations, when they are so far from all this, when life for them is only joy, song, greenery, total freedom, madness? They answered in one voice: because... And I reproduce from the memory of that dialogue just some of their arguments:

„"Ana Blandiana does not answer questions, but rather asks more and more questions, more and more disturbing, more unusual, more profound.

Because she convinced us, reading her poems, that her husband, Romi, so caring and protective during their fifty years of marriage, never actually left, that physical separation does not mean final departure, that they remained, as in the myth of the androgyne, fused for eternity. United by shared ideals and dreams, fears and doubts, fleeting wonders and enthusiasms, thinking alike in the civic space, but also in the intimate. Dreaming of freedom and fighting for it.

Hence the devastating question, which remains unanswered:

Is it easy to be dead?
Is it harder to be alive?
How to endure time
When is it late for you?

I understood, reading his poems, that there are no borders between life and death, that the law of love is the very law of abolishing all borders. And that love alone is capable of pulverizing the meaning of death as disappearance, because it and only it gives meaning to the life of the one who remains...

And, yes, even if some don't believe it, I learned (they say) by reading his poems, that the death of the loved one does not mean separation, but eternal existence, that (Einstein said it) love remains the only force that governs the universe.

If she believes, we accompany her timidly... Somewhere, in realms unknown to us humans, SHE and HE will meet, speaking without words, in a silence that will also mean love...

Ana Blandiana confesses that they were bound by words more than by blood, and the words, often divisive, will bind them again and again as in earthly life.

And if a great poet asked more light, the two of them, poets and thinkers, confessors of LOVE, ask, in one voice, for more tranquility, ask for peace in the troubled, chaotic, restless world, in the din unleashed on planet Earth.

So many things, facts, events, remain hidden, forever unclear...

Everything that can be understood
It's hopeless and lawless.
And leaven grows in heresy,
Everything that is meaningless...

We are very attracted to her idea that poetry can save the world. And we want to believe that good poetry will certainly save what is left of it.”

When Blandiana invites us to read the most metaphysical of her books, "Variations on a given theme", and, one by one, with love and thirst for poetry, the thousands of verses and the incomparably beautiful prose, we follow her... In the end, we either want to believe it, or else, she convinces us that magic exists. That everything is magic. Oh, if only it were so.... Maybe life, and death, and we ourselves are... magic, and the difference between life and death is just a letter away...? EMET and MET...?

Elizabeth Pop
Oradea, April 16, 2026