(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 7)
Cristian Popescu who died five years ago on February 21, was one of those poets who lived through their writing, working “day and night” to create their “opus”. Able to publish only one volume before 1989, called ‘Popescu Family”, which was issued under a collection called “The smallest book” of a student magazine, he wrote workbook after workbook, reading them only to this friends and to a few acquaintances. The first actual volume of verses called “Foreword” appeared in 1989 in a version crippled by communist censorship; in 1994 another book was edited: “Arta Popescu” a book which includes, one may say, the final versions of those poems he wanted published. But Arta Popescu, his source of inspiration, is present is numerous reiterations of the same texts in the workbooks mentioned above, as Cristian was a “perfectionist” who would give a great deal of importance to any detail, rewriting a poem dozens of times to replace one word or phrase. This is probably why, closer than verse volumes to the complete and, why not, a bit eccentric artist Cristian Popescu, are these workbooks, true “object-books”, bi-dimensional shows of words, phrases, sketches, designs etc. This is why Manuscriptum preferred to integrally reproduce on of his workbooks, the one that the poet received from Laura Covaci, his terrestrial muse at that time, the manuscripts being, it seems, “more alive” than the impersonal computer/printer letter. This “nude” piece of Popescu’s creation would be accompanied by mini-magazine including comments by different artists (Catalin ?arlea, Horia Garbea, Mihail Galateanu, Radu Sergiu Ruba, Gavril Pinte) and critics (Mircea Martin, Alexandru Condeedscu), friends of the poet, and a photo album from the launch of his last book, pictures taken by Dora Stanescu. This was a special launch, which is worth remembering because it was made in the open , in front of the University, with the actors of Odeon theatre luring the passers-by to buy the volume, in a genuine street show. Why actors of Odeon Theatre (aerban Ionescu, Marius Stanescu, Oana atefanescu, Ionel Mihaescu, Camelia Maxim, Marian Ghinea etc)? Because at that time Popescu was working together with director Alexander Hausvater in a stage transcription of “La ?iganci” by Mircea Eliade which ended in a successful show, one of the best and most repeated theatre plays in ’93 – ’94. Cristian worked with the team, in a “work-on-progress” clue creation that was quite usual abroad, but the first of this kind in post-communist Romania. It seemed quite important to also mention this face of him: the “dramatic rebel of dramatic art” of a writer considered by a pre-apocalyptic literary critic as “one of the rare rebels of a literature generally touched by the ‘tragic’.”