Mircea Ivănescu. The radicalization of absolute discretion
The following text represents a commentary of the first collection of Mircea Ivănescu’s posthumous poems. It has been said repeatedly that Mircea Ivănescu’s poetry knows no evolution and no variation at all, it is exquisite and monotonous from its first public manifestations at the end of the fifties to the last poems published in 2000. Even though undoubtedly true in what regards its exquisite quality, this critical cliché must be adjusted or, even best, refuted in what concerns the monotony and the lack of variation – these posthumous poems display from time to time a surprising radicalization of what I have called in my book on Mircea Ivănescu „the absolute discretion” of his poetry. Thus, Ivănescu’s poetry do has an evolution – if not in quality, at least in its ascendant tone: from the initial diminuendo, its inner tragic force is revealed openly by the rinforzando of the later poems.
Keywords: contemporary Romanian poetry, generation 1960, biographism, confessional poetry, bookish vs. biographic, radicalization of absolute discretion
