Gherasim Luca
Encyclopedia
Gherasim Luca was a Surrealist
theorist and Romania
n poet
. He is frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari
.
the son of a Jewish tailor, he spoke Yiddish
, Romanian
, German
, and French
. During 1938, he traveled frequently to Paris
where he was introduced to the Surrealist circles. World War II
and the official antisemitism in Romania forced him into local exile
. During the short pre-Communist
period of Romanian independence, he founded a Surrealist artists group, together with Gellu Naum
, Paul Păun, Virgil Teodorescu and Dolfi Trost
.
His first publications, including poems in French followed. He was the inventor of cubomania and, with Dolfi Trost, the author of the statement "Dialetic of Dialectic"
in 1945. Harassed in Romania and caught while trying to flee the country, the self-called étran-juif ("StranJew") finally left Romania in 1952, and moved to Paris through Israel
.
There he worked among others with Jean Arp
, Paul Celan
, François Di Dio and Max Ernst
, producing numerous collage
s, drawings, objects, and text-installations. From 1967, his reading sessions took him to places like Stockholm
, Oslo
, Geneva
, New York City
, and San Francisco. The 1988 TV-portrait by Raoul Sanglas, Comment s'en sortir sans sortir, made him famous for a larger readership.
In 1994, he was expelled from his apartment officially for "hygiene reasons." Luca had spent forty years in France without papers and could not cope. On February 9, at the age of 80, he committed suicide by jumping into the Seine
.
Others:
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
theorist and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. He is frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
and Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
.
Biography
Born in BucharestBucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
the son of a Jewish tailor, he spoke Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. During 1938, he traveled frequently to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where he was introduced to the Surrealist circles. World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the official antisemitism in Romania forced him into local exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
. During the short pre-Communist
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
period of Romanian independence, he founded a Surrealist artists group, together with Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum was a prominent Romanian poet, dramatist, novelist, children's writer, and translator. He is remembered as the founder of the Romanian Surrealist group...
, Paul Păun, Virgil Teodorescu and Dolfi Trost
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of Dialectique de la dialectique...
.
His first publications, including poems in French followed. He was the inventor of cubomania and, with Dolfi Trost, the author of the statement "Dialetic of Dialectic"
Surautomatism
Surautomatism is any theory or act in practice of surrealist creative production taking, or purporting to take, automatism to its most absurd limits....
in 1945. Harassed in Romania and caught while trying to flee the country, the self-called étran-juif ("StranJew") finally left Romania in 1952, and moved to Paris through Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
There he worked among others with Jean Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
, Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
, François Di Dio and Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, producing numerous collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
s, drawings, objects, and text-installations. From 1967, his reading sessions took him to places like Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and San Francisco. The 1988 TV-portrait by Raoul Sanglas, Comment s'en sortir sans sortir, made him famous for a larger readership.
In 1994, he was expelled from his apartment officially for "hygiene reasons." Luca had spent forty years in France without papers and could not cope. On February 9, at the age of 80, he committed suicide by jumping into the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
.
Selected works
Most of his poetic works were written in French. There are no known translation of his poem collections into English. However, with the authorisation of éditions Corti, a forthcoming chapbook of his poems translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain will be featured in "Poetry International", Issue no. 15, Spring 2010.- Un loup à travers une loupe, Bucharest, 1942. Poems in prose, initially published in Romanian. Later translated into French by Gherasim Luca. Apart from Ce Château Pressenti, they remained unpublished in French until 1998, Éditions José Corti
- Quantitativement aimée, Éditions de l'Oubli, Bucharest, 1944
- Le Vampire passif, Éditions de l'Oubli, Bucharest 1945
- Dialectique de la dialectiqueDialectique de la dialectiqueDialectique de la dialectique is a 1945 text publication by Romanian surrealists Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost. Its subtitle was Message to the International Surrealist Movement...
, together with Dolfi Trost, Éditions surréalistes, Bucharest, 1945 - Les Orgies des Quanta, Éditions de l'Oubli, Bucharest 1946
- Amphitrite, Éditions de l’Infra-noir, Bucharest 1945
- Le Secret du vide et du plein, Éditions de l'Oubli, Bucharest 1947
- Héros-Limite, Le Soleil Noir, Paris 1953 with an engraving and three drawings
- Ce Château Pressenti, Méconnaissance, Paris 1958, with frontispieceBook frontispieceA frontispiece is a decorative illustration facing a book's title page. The frontispiece is the verso opposite the recto title page. Elaborate engraved frontispieces were in frequent use, especially in Bibles and in scholarly books, and many are masterpieces of engraving...
and engraving by Victor BraunerVictor BraunerVictor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
. This poem is part of Un loup à travers une loupe - La Clef, Poème-Tract, 1960, Paris
- L'Extrême-Occidentale, Éditions Mayer, LausanneLausanneLausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
1961 with 7 engravings by Jean Arp, Brauner, Max Ernst, Jacques Hérold, Wifredo LamWifredo LamWifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
, Roberto MattaRoberto MattaRoberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren , better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art....
, Dorothea TanningDorothea TanningDorothea Tanning is an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She has also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre.-Biography:... - La Lettre, no editor mentioned, Paris, 1960
- Le Sorcier noir, with Jacques Hérold, Paris 1996
- Sept slogans ontophoniques, Brunidor, Paris 1963 with engravings by Augustin Fernandez, Enrique Zanartu, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, Jacques Hérold.
- Poésie élémentaire, Éditions Brunidor, VaduzVaduzVaduz is the capital of the principality of Liechtenstein and the seat of the national parliament. The town, located along the Rhine, has about 5,100 inhabitants , most of whom are Roman Catholic. Its cathedral is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop....
, LiechtensteinLiechtensteinThe Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
, 1966 - Apostroph'Apocalypse, Éditions Upiglio, MilanMilanMilan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
1967 with fourteen engravings by Wifredo Lam - Sisyphe Géomètre, Éditions Givaudan, Paris, 1967 Book-sculpture designed by Piotr Kowalski
- Droit de regard sur les idées, Brunidor, Paris, 1967
- Déférés devant un tribunal d'exception, no editor mentioned, Paris, 1968.
- Dé-Monologue, Brunidor, Paris, 1969 with two engravings by Micheline Catty
- La Fin du monde, Éditions Petitthory, Paris 1969 with frontispiece by Micheline Catty and five drawings by Ghérasim Luca
- Le Tourbillon qui repose, Critique et Histoire, 1973
- Le Chant de la carpe, Le Soleil Noir, Paris, 1973 with sonogramme and sculpture by Kowalski
- Présence de l'imperceptible, Franz Jacob, Châtelet; with no date of publication
- Paralipomènes, Le Soleil Noir, Paris 1976 with a cubomania by Luca
- Théâtre de Bouche, Criapl'e, Paris, 1984 with an engraving and nine drawings by Micheline Catty.
- Satyres et Satrape, Éditions de la Crem, Barlfeur, 1987
- Le Cri, Éditions Au fil de l'encre, Paris, 1995
Others:
- La proie s'ombre
- La voici la voie silanxieuse
- Levée d'écrou, Éditions José Corti, 2003
Filmography
- Comment s'en sortir sans sortir (1988), directed by Raoul Sangla, in which Gherasim Luca recites eight of his poems in a very sober setting.
External links
- Page about Gherasim Luca in French
- "Passionnément", poem and audio document of the poet's performance (in French, authorized by copyright holder)
- "Quart d'heure de culture métaphysique", poem and audio document of the poet's performance (in French, authorized by copyright holder)
- English translation of some of his poems:
- Dominique Carlat: Ghérasim Luca l'intempestif