The Bridge
SynopsisPlot
A book of wryly quizzical poems composed from his sickbed over five weeks as he waited for death to take him, his testament not just to human mortality and pain but to resistance and creative transformation. The Bridge is unlike any other poetry book: like a medieval dance of death but sombre in movement, a procession of breathlessly spoken, painfully comic poems. Marin Sorescu was a cheerfully melancholic comic genius, and one of the most original voices in Romanian literature. His mischievous poetry and satirical plays earned him great popularity during the Communist era. While his witty, ironic parables were not directly critical of the régime, Romanians used to a culture of double-speak could read other meanings in his playful mockery of the human condition. But later – like a hapless character from one of his absurdist dramas – the peasant-born people’s poet was made Minister of Culture.
Story
About this book
The Bridge is a collection of poems by Marin Sorescu, one of the most recognized voices in Romanian literature. Written from his sickbed over the course of five weeks as he faced his own death, the poems move between mortality, pain, resistance, and creative transformation. The tone is not one of despair but of wry, questioning comedy, sometimes compared to a medieval dance of death in its steady, sombre procession.
Sorescu was known during the Communist era for mischievous poetry and satirical plays that earned wide popularity in Romania. His ironic parables did not attack the regime directly, but readers accustomed to double-speak found layered meanings in his playful treatment of the human condition. Born into a peasant family, he later became Minister of Culture, a turn he might have written into one of his own absurdist dramas.
The Bridge won the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation. Its poems are breathlessly spoken and painfully comic, shaped by a writer whose lifelong instinct was to meet difficult subjects with wit rather than solemnity. The collection stands as a final, sustained sequence written under specific and pressing circumstances.
