The poetry volume Nobel Prize Candidate by the Romanian contemporary poet Alexa Gavril Bāle invites the reader to step into a very personal lyrical universe, with profound emotions and sharp poetic visions. Romanian literary critics love this poet and praise his work.
Mix of the Telluric and the Intellectual
One evening, a few years ago, in the literary and plastic creation camp of Ocoliş, near Baia-Mare – a camp organized by the inexhaustible multilateral artist Ioan Marchiş; a camp whereupon sat to write and to rest a number of the lots of petals of the famous ’80s flower generation (among them: Alexandru Vlad, Ion Mureşan, Ioan S. Pop, Lucian Perţa, George Ţāra and in his last trip through Maramureş, Augustin Frăţilă and Constantin Stan) – Alexa Gavril Bāle was reading poetry. I didn’t know anything about him, except that he was a vet for several Maramureş villages and some kind of „sponsor” of the manifestation, bringing the natural products of sheep, cow and pork.
He began reading and from the first lines, Ion Mureşan and I were both impressed by the strength of the images and the verbs, which reminded us of a young Ioan Alexandru. But – fatality! – hardly had he finished reading two of his poems when his mobile on the table rang. Unruffled, he stopped his reading, answered the call and from what he said we understood that it was some kind of veterinary emergency: somewhere, something was happening, a cow was trying to give birth – if my memory serves me right – and the villager needed counseling, which the poet gave on the spot.
After another 2–3 splendid poems, the mobile rang again: another possible tragedy that needed his intervention, at least by phone, from the specialist.
And it’s exactly what happened. I confess that, beyond the humor of the situation, I was impressed by this fortuitous mix of the telluric and the spiritual, of the material and the evanescent: from its high miraculous spheres, the poetry was forced to come back to the ground, probably on the floor of some stable, where, in fact another miracle was born, that of a live being.
Ioan Groşan
About the Good Order of the Soul
A veterinarian, with a PhD from Cluj-Napoca institute, A. G. Bāle fully uses the profession’s advantages with regards to his source of inspiration, theme, subjects, sources that are often found in his poems, and mostly in his prose.
Alexa Gavril Bāle is a surprising and fascinating poet, the owner of a personalized and original literary stamp or – if the foreign influences are somehow visible – these influences are only left at suggestion level, in a deep underlay; a poet with personal voice and with a lyric universe that he doesn’t share with other people. He writes about Fata Morgana’s scarf, about the leaves’ alphabet, about the tear’s inquisition, about the Good Hope Temple, about the autumn’s wells, about the grass’s chaise, about the tear’s geometry, about wise men’s biographies, like he would try to contribute to a good structure of the reader’s soul.
Alexa Gavril Bāle is a poet of suggestion, a spirit poet, from whose lyrics a silent, assumed, deep sadness comes through, with obvious metaphysical meanings, with a long shot. His poems are small image and thoughts compositions which leaves inside the reader’s soul a strange feeling of sadness mixed with the possibility of treating this melancholy in happy ways. What is lost with the quasi-absence of the lyric, is regained through some sort of well-mastered tender ceremonial, through suggestion, through the science of the grain core that rapidly germinates and vigorously grows in the mind and soul of the reader.
Nicolae Scheianu
Alexa Gavril Bāle:
- – Born on September 4, 1963, in Cetăţele, Maramureş
- – Veterinarian by profession, with a PhD in medical-veterinarian sciences
- – Degree in Catholic theology
Debut: Flacăra [Flame] magazine, 1982, endorsed by the poet Geo Dumitrescu.
Published Works:
- Iubita fratelui Rafael [Brother Rafael's Lover] (a novel, Gutinul Publishing House, Baia Mare, 1992);
- Candidat la Premiul Nobel [Nobel Prize Candidate] (poems, Cybele Publishing House, Baia Mare, 1995; English translation: eLiteratura, Bucharest, 2015);
- Secunde īn afara orei [Seconds Outside the Hour] (poems, Omega-Ariadna Publishing House, Baia Mare, 1997);
- Locurile goale ale legendelor [The Empty Places of the Legends] (poems, Scriptorium Publishing House, Baia Mare, 2006);
- Umbre īn scriptorium [Shadows in the Scriptorium] (poems, North University Press, Baia Mare, 2003);
- America de dincolo de gard [America From Beyond the Fence] (short stories, Limex Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2004; the second edition ?as well as the English version of this book was published by eLiteratura, Bucharest, 2013 and 2014 respectively);
- 9 povestiri şi alte vise [9 Stories and Other Dreams] (Grinta Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2009);
- Făptura [The Creature] (poems, Scriptorium-Arheus Publishing Houses, Baia Mare, 2011),
- Ţinuturile iertării [The Realms of Forgiveness] (a lyric anthology, eLiteratura, Bucharest 2013);
- Traiectorii Fragile [Fragile Trajectories] (Romanian-Latin bilingual poems, Singur Press, Tārgovişte, 2015);
- Cotidian Strident [Strident Quotidian] (poems, eLiteratura, Bucharest 2016);
- Leacuri pentru vite [Medicines for Cattle] (a folklore collection, Cybele Publishing House, Baia Mare, 1994; second edition: Ethnology Publishing House, Baia Mare, 2002);
- 53 de poeme [53 Poems] (eLiteratura, Bucharest, 2016).
