In Praise of Sleep: Selected Poems of Lucian Blaga

The present volume includes the majority of Lucian Blaga's poetry written before the Communist era. Missing are only the posthumous poems. The genius of any poetry is fragile because it does not reside in any of its analytically identifiable components. Blaga's postwar poetry appears to have all the "Blagian" elements, but the animating breath is largely missing. The great silence took it back. In leaving out a large body of work by so neatly severing the earlier poet from his later self, I...