In order to see all its layers, one needs to look at the 'Evening Star' - infinite poem - with triple vision, the usual sight by necessity magnified with a Cyclopean eye , the eye in the middle of the forehead.

Seeing it first through the eyes of the child, then those of the adolescent, then of a grown-up and a poet, I've been fascinated by this work of (apparent) simplicity crowned by the poet's genius with an angelic halo. The child read it as a disquieting fairy tale, the adolescent as a drama of incompatibility. The adult poet found it a poetic masterpiece of multiplying meanings and magical vocabulary, a message packaged for eternity.

Untranslatable.
Untranslatable?

I have always thought that when an established text, especially one of supreme quality, is moved from one language to another, it is akin to a mutation. It is like the transplanting of an entire flora and fauna into a different soil and climate with the purpose of making it live, breathe and belong organically in the new natural dimension. I have also always thought that to separate the content of a poem from the specific prosodic form given by its author is a sort of crime. This would be committed only by a sloppy or unqualified translator, either irreverent or iconoclastic.To sever Eminescu (or Puskin) from his music was simply to invalidate him in the adopted language.

The often mentioned 'faithfulness' to the author is never accomplished at the level of the word but rather at that of sound and connotation. And if this seems to state the obvious, to fulfill these conditions is, nevertheless, as risky and courageous as it is for alien planets to establish contact.

Of course, to be brave cannot in itself secure excellent results. The translator must have a profound understanding for the work of his dedication and at the same time possess an array of tools and professional experience capable of matching the virtuosity of the author.

But here, again, Eminescu's indisputable virtuosity is subsumed to an even more mysterious form; a super-melody seems to envelop everything in a miraculous aura which makes it so much more difficult, if not impossible, to be intoned 'by a tongue alien'.

Having to obey so many commandments, the work accomplished by Adrian George Sahlean is undoubtedly quite a feat. He is not the first who dared to climb the 'steps of perfection' and, I am sure , he will not be the last. On reading it, though, some of his solutions seem impossible to exceed.

Since this edition is bilingual, perhaps I ought to illustrate it. But I fear that for the English and American readers this would be rather cumbersome and superfluous; moreover, the poem's impact should happen beyond my argument. Still, I will choose, among many possible others, a stanza that speaks of the translator's capacity for 'transfer':

'Strãin la vorbã si la port
Lucesti fãr' de viatã
Cãci eu sunt vie, tu esti mort
Si ochiul tãu mã-ngheatã.'

For you speak words of lifeless breeze
An you are strangely clad,
Under your gaze my eyes would freeze
For I'm alive, your dead.'

I consider this most recent translation of the 'Evening Star' a true cultural event which should be welcomed.

Nina Cassian