| Ghérasim Luca |  |
Three Prose Pieces Translated by Julian Semilian
From Sorcery To Silence: The Objects of Gherasim Luca
Krzysztof Fijalkowski
Gherasim Luca (or Gherashim Luca) (July 23, 1913 - February 9, 1994) was a surrealist theorist and Romanian poet, frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
Luca was born in Bucharest, the son of a Jewish tailor. He spoke Yiddish, Romanian, German and French. From 1938, he traveled frequently to Paris, France, where he was introduced to the Surrealist circles. WorldWar II and the official antisemitism in Romania forced him into local exile. During the short pre-Communist period of Romanian independence, he founded aSurrealist artists group, together with Gellu Naum, Paun, Theodorescu 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 1945 statement "Dialetic of Dialectic" . Harassed in Romania and caught whiletrying 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 collages, drawings, objects andtext-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. On February 9, at the age of 80, he committed suicide by jumping in the Seine .Works:
Most of his poetic works were written in French . There are no known translation of his poem collections into English .
• Un loup à travers une loupe , Bucharest, 1942 . Poemsin prose, initially published in Romanian. Later translated into French by Gherasim Luca. Apart from Ce ChâteauPressenti , they remained unpublished in French until 1998 , Éditions JoséCorti
• Quantitativement aimée , Éditions de l'Oubli, Bucharest, 1944
• Le Vampirepassif , Éditions de l'Oubli, Bucharest 1945
• Dialectique de ladialectique , together with Dolfi Trost, Éditions surréalistes, Bucharest, 1945
• Les Orgiesdes 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 , LeSoleil Noir, Paris 1953 with an engraving and three drawings
• Ce Château Pressenti, Méconnaissance, Paris 1958 , with frontispiece and engraving by Victor Brauner . This poem is part ofUn loup à travers une loupe
• La Clef , Poème-Tract, 1960 , Paris
• L'Extrême-Occidentale , Éditions Mayer, Lausanne 1961 with 7 engravings by Jean Arp, Brauner, Max Ernst, Jacques Hérold , Wilfredo Lam , Roberto Matta , Dorothea Tanning
• La Lettre , no editormentioned, Paris, 1960
• Le Sorciernoir , with Jacques Hérold, Paris 1996
• Sept slogans ontophoniques , Brunidor, Paris 1963 withengravings by AugustinFernandez , EnriqueZanartu , Gisèle Celan-Lestrange , JacquesHérold.
• Poésieélémentaire , Éditions Brunidor, Vaduz , Liechtenstein , 1966
• Apostroph'Apocalypse , Éditions Upiglio, Milan 1967 with fourteen engravings by Wilfredo Lam
• SisypheGéomètre , 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 dumonde , Éditions Petitthory, Paris 1969 with frontispiece by Micheline Catty andfive drawings by Ghérasim Luca
• LeTourbillon qui repose , Critique et Histoire, 1973
• Le Chant dela carpe , Le Soleil Noir, Paris, 1973 with sonogramme and sculpture byKowalski
• Présence de l'imperceptible , Franz Jacob, Châtelet; with no date of publication
• Paralipomènes ,Le Soleil Noir, Paris 1976 with a cubomania by Luca
• Théâtre deBouche , Criapl'e, Paris, 1984 with an engraving and nine drawings by MichelineCatty.
• Satyres etSatrape , Éditions de la Crem, Barlfeur , 1987
• Le Cri , Éditions Au fil del'encre, Paris, 1995