The Bessarabia of My Soul – a collection of poetry from The Republic of Moldova

Coordinators: Daniel Ioniță, Sydney, Australia and Maria Tonu, Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
Published by Mediaton, 2026

https://mariatonu.wordpress.com/mediaton-publishing-house/

This volume also contains a selection of poems

translated by the authors for

Testament – Anthology of Modern Romanian Verse

– bilingual edition Romanian/English

published by Minerva Publishing House in 2015

and was realized with the support of

Australian – Romanian Academy for Culture.

Preface:

A union of competence,

good taste and enthusiasm

– in the service of Bessarabian poetry

Two very competent literary figures from

Bessarabia and Romania, Maria Tonu –

Bessarabian writer and editor living in

Toronto, Canada, and Daniel Ionita,

university lecturer, poet and translator

originating from Bucharest and settled

in Sydney, Australia – have achieved

something our politicians from both the

Eastern and Western sides of the Prut river

could not: to unite their efforts for the good

of Bessarabia. Specifically, for the promotion

of Bessarabian poetry and of Romanian

language poets from there – into the English

language space – the lingua franca in today’s

world. And they do this with

professionalism, competence, good taste and

enthusiasm.

If someone would have asked for a list of

translators capable to translate Romanian poetry

from Bessarabia in English, I could have given them

a hundred names. We have an army of good

translators, with whom we could conquer the world

– culturally – if we didn’t discourage them by

paying them poorly for their work and not even

offering them a moral reward (there are literary

critics who, when they comment on a book in

translation, make no reference to the translator!).

But had I been asked for just one single name of the

translator I consider the most appropriate for such

and enterprise, I would have come to Daniel Ionita,

without a doubt, who not only has the talent, the

vocational intellectual training, but also the

enthusiasm and the means necessary (through the

Australian-Romanian Academy for Culture which he

leads) for promoting Romanian literature around the

world.

The impressive collection of Romanian poetry

from all eras, Testament, which appeared in a few

successive editions (Minerva Publishing) all

bilingual, enjoyed and continues to enjoy a resounding success, fed by admirers, but also by

detractors, who are never far away where we talk

about a valuable endeavour – easily generating envy.

The new volume in front of you is in the same

vein – The Bessarabia of My Soul – a collection of

poetry from the Republic of Moldova. Edited by

Maria Tonu and Daniel Ionita, translated by Daniel

Ionita, assisted by Eva Foster, Daniel Reynaud and

Rochelle Bews – who also cooperated to realise the

exceptional series of volumes Testament –

Anthology of Modern Romanian Verse (bilingual

version) mentioned above – this is an important

cultural work, vital I could say, for the poetry of the

Bessarabian space. Moldova and Bukovina, both

those from the interior and the exterior of Romania’s

current borders, ancient Romanian territories, have

proven during their history a true vocation for poetry

– to certify this we need only mention Mihai

Eminescu, national poet of both these spaces – but

the current volume will reveal the existence of

many, many more. The fragments of these historical provinces

which have abusively been integrated in the

componence of the USSR, have been subjected, for

about half a century, not only to a process of

“communistisation”, but to also one of forced de-

nationalization, including the disfiguring or the

Romanian language through adopting the Cyrillic

alphabet (a functional and harmonious one for

writing in Russian, but alien in the Romanian

language space) and the invention of a grotesque

and deceiving glottonym: the Moldavian language.

Despite that, even in this space of

ostracization for the Romanian language, poetry did

not cease to exist and evolve. After 1989, when we,

those living in Romania, were no longer forbidden

to communicate with the Bessarabians, we had a

true revelation, discovering what great poetry had

continued to be written in the Republic of Moldova.

We become joyful when we discover some new

poem of Tudor Arghezi or Nichita Stănescu. In the

same way, but on a much larger scale, after 1989

we discovered thousands of new great poems (for us) of Romanian poets living on the other side of

the Prut river. We had a celebration.

Daniel Ionita, the well-known poet and

translator, assisted by the Fairy-Godmother of

Romanian literature from Canada, Maria Tonu,

explores and emphasizes the value of this recently

recovered chapter from the history of Romanian

literature. They contribute, not only to the the

promotion of Bessarabian poetry in large areas of

universal culture, but also to the completion of the

image foreigners might have about Romanian

poetry.

It is truly remarkable the large scope for good

taste and competence afforded by Maria Tonu and

Daniel Ionita in approaching the handling this

poetic material: the experienced Romanian poet and

translator from Sydney and the Bessarabian writer

and editor from Toronto, do not discriminate

between classics and romantics, between modern

and post-modern, between narcissists and militants,

between intimists and visionaries.

This collection represents all directions of

Romanian poetry written in Bessarabia. And the translator does not hesitate to reconstitute in English

the enunciations, solemnly-sententious, for

Eminescu’s “Gloss”, or the lamentation full of

dramatism from “Bessarabia with Sorrow” of

Grigore Vieru, or the paradoxical ideas constructed

in the poetry of Leo Butnaru, or the high-

emotionalism erupting with light from the well-

known poem “All the Wattle Trees are Crazy” by

Arhip Cibotaru (put to music and electrifyingly

interpreted by Tudor Gheorghe). I was especially

impressed by the way it sounds – like the tolling of a

bell – in the English translation of Daniel Ionita, the

poem-in-prose The Hymn of Romania by Alecu

Russo: „Wake up Romanian land! vanquish your

pain; it is time to raise up from your slumber, you

seed of this world’s kings!… Are you perhaps

waiting to be resurrected, so that your ancestors rise

from their tombs? Verily, verily they have risen, and

you have not noticed them… They have spoken and

you have not heard… Brace yourself, seek and

listen… The day of justice draws near… all the

peoples have been rumbling… as the day of

salvation has begun…” We, the Romanians from Romania, have suffered

during communism a true tragedy, with millions put

in jail, killed, or expelled from the country for

political reasons, yet we had never been interdicted

the use of our language, the essence of our identity.

To the Bessarabians this was forbidden. The natural

act of the mother-tongue had become in many cases

a heroic act. So, from the poets of Bessarabia, true

heroes have emerged, unto the cause of the

Romanian language. One of these, Dumitru

Matcovschi, represented in this volume, dedicated

an ode to the Romanian language (as did Alexei

Mateevici, as did Grigore Vieru, as did others), and

not through some external rhetoric, but with an

existential tremor transmissible to us:

It is ours, our language,

and one with it, we form a nation,

like stars

within the skies

are stars

with their eternal light creation.

It is ours, our language

together we the earth engrave

like the big sea

it is a sea

its waters – an eternal wave.The writers from the Republic of Moldova have

things to learn from us, but we also can learn from

them – for example this appreciation of the

Romanian language (to which, lately, we no longer

pay the required attention).

Similarly, we can learn patriotism, which we

repudiate openly today, mistakenly confusing it with

jingoistic demagogy. Our only recent poet (born,

possibly not by chance, in the Republic of Moldova)

who never hesitated to declare his love for all things

Romanian, Adrian Păunescu, is regarded maliciously

in Romania (even after his death) and with

admiration and love in Bessarabia. We find him in

this volume with a simple and moving poem,

unknown or maybe just forgotten – still sang here

and there by Mădălina Amon – gripping our soul:

“Though people living in these parts

It seems that God abides

As firewood across their yards

they bring with little strides.

And, Eden-like, they peace convey

in all their rites and ways

When for their horses bring some hay,

and for their sheep some maize… In all, this mystery abides,

and lingers through their hearth;

Three parts of them in heaven lay,

and just one part on earth…

And all the while with growing hope

they fan their fire bright

For God, when visiting their dreams,

to warm Himself at night.”

Even though I did not enjoy a childhood in the

country-side, I recognise this ancestral world,

evocated with such nostalgia by Adrian Păunescu –

evocation which could apply easily to any

Romanian village, whether to the West or to the

East of the Prut river. Daniel Ionita forwarded this

poem for the English language readers and I am

convinced that they will also be jolted a bit, while

reading it, by some memory from their own

ancestral past.

Displaying democracy and comprehensiveness

– which had as unique criteria for selecting the

authors for just the literary value of their work – the

editors and the translation team made room in the

book for poets of all generations. The generation

identified by us as “of the seventies” is represented by Nicolae Dabija, Dumitru Băluță, Eugen Cioclea,

Iulian Filip, Leo Butnaru, Leonida Lari, Arcadie

Suceveanu and others, the “eighties” by Maria Tonu,

Maria Chirtoacă, Valerian Ciobanu, Renata

Verejanu, Vitalie Răileanu, Tatiana Afanase-Creciun

and others, the “nineties” by the likes of Dumitru

Crudu, Traian Vasilcău Iulian Fruntașu, Tatiana

Dabija etc. Surely this partition into decades is only

conventional, its only aim being that of making

visible the succession of newer waves of poets –

proof of the vitality of poetry written in Bessarabia.

The selection reaches to authors only relatively

recently born, but well developed as poets: Ana

Donțu (1985), Aura Maru (1990), Ion Buzu (1990),

Maria Paula Erizanu (1992).

The collection ends with the

heartrending poem “Letter to Bessarabia”

written by Daniel Ionita himself:

“Your blood and your tears flow in deep rivers,

as if bursting from the pierced thigh of Christ,

himself crucified, innocent, just like you.

They trickle on your hills and fields

from Bălți to Orhei, Dolna and Slobozia, through all your villages with autumns and springs

shackled still,

flowering from longings into poems with scents of

freedom.

From Great Stefan,

who sacrificed his whole life for faith and land,

from Brave Michael, who, for but a moment,

fulfilled a dream which still troubles us –

you have remained there, between the Prut and the

Dniester,

with your daughters and your sons,

these saints whom I call sisters and brothers.”…

What else can we say? In fact, nothing more –

all we must do is simply read this book, which

transports us into the world of Bessarabian poetry,

only this time not just us, those who know

Romanian, but also those who were not so lucky to

be born into this most-beautiful and heroic language.

Alex Ștefănescu

– literary critic and historian –