Musical-poetic correspondences in Adrian Pop's oeuvre. Back to the Bucharest days of Paul Celan

Abstract

Although the references to Paul Celan's biographical background mainly refer to his Parisian period, the two years spent by the poet from Bucovina in the Romanian capital (1945-1947) proved extremely beneficial to his artistic genius. His membership to the circle of poets and literates such as Nina Cassian, Vladimir Colin, Ovidiu Crohmălniceanu, Petre Solomon, as well as the influence of the Romanian surrealist group led by Gellu Naum were to leave their mark on Celan's formative path. In 2020, the Cluj composer Adrian Pop wrote a song cycle entitled Iubiri uitate (Forgotten Loves), which includes fragments from 2 Romanian poems by Celan – Poem pentru umbra Marianei (Poem for the Shadow of Marianna) and Tristețe (Sadness) – as well as an unfinished poem. The hermetic symbolism and surrealist nuances of the texts dominated by contradictory feelings (love, doubt, melancholy, tragic loss, distant memory) find their correspondence in modal-chromatic sonorities close to atonalism, tonal-modal intonations or Sprechgesang-type discourse.