„Stefan Baciu: Walker in the world city of poetry” by Tony Quagliano

În partea a doua a dosarului tematic „Ștefan Baciu”, vă propunem un text semnat de Tony Quagliano, poet, critic literar, eseist, profesor la Universitatea din Hawaii. Textul a apărut în revista „MELE Arhipelago. Scrisoare arhipelagică de poezie”, număr aniversar, din decembrie 2018, dedicat centenarului nașterii lui Ștefan Baciu, număr îngrijit de Yoshiro Sakamoto, căruia îi mulțumim pentru acordul de a-l republica pe Literomania. De asemenea, Laura Ruby, soția sa, a citit acest text în septembrie 2025, la mormântul lui Ștefan și al Mirei Baciu, moment pe care îl puteți viziona și în partea a doua a documentarului „Ștefan Baciu, un scriitor brașovean în exil”. (Literomania)

Tony Quagliano

Stefan Baciu: Walker in the world city of poetry

Stefan Baciu, polyglot, internationalist, universalist, relentlessly sought what was humane and irreducibly human in the poetry of the world. As all true poets he resisted the restrictive literary and political categorizing that scholars and critics often engage in. Yes, he was a serious and lifelong student of surrealism, he would say, but not a surrealist. He was sensitive to the various and often conflicting passions represented in the intellectual and aesthetic movements in Eastern Europe and throughout the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world, and his instinct was always to seek the essential humanity wherever it may be found.

His instincts also led him to the spiritual (he had a long correspondence with his countryman, Mircea Eliade)–whether religious or secular–as the necessary antidote to the various authoritarianisms in politics and technology. In this regard, he was especially moved by the art of Jean Chariot and the spirituality in the thinking and poetry of Thomas Merton.

A cosmopolitan who walked in the world city of poetry, he was also an inveterate walker in his home city of Honolulu. Whether in Pacific Heights in the early mornings, or in the more deserted Sunday afternoon streets in downtown Honolulu where I would see him, he absorbed the sensuous complexity of his adopted city, and produced finely-observed poems. Here’s one, from his chapbook, „Ukulele”, published by Menehune Press, Honolulu, 1972, which shows his lyrical sense as well as the persistence of memory:

Still

Birds are singing
The trimmed grass
Smells of
Infancy
The coeds go by
Along the walks
As they did
along the Elisabeta
Boulevard
in Bucharest
The wind whistles

And the leaves
To the same melody
Only the palm trees
Make the difference.

Stefan Baciu was a poet of profound authenticity and humanity, and an enormously gracious man. Those of us who knew him will always value his work and his lifelong example.

From Andrei Codrescu’s Exquisite Corpse, and from MELE.

Tony Quagliano, Honolulu