DEFINING THE IN-BETWEEN

Poems in Béla Markó’s first two volumes of poetry

Abstract

Béla Markó’s early poetry can be described as being situated in-between two generational poetics. Markó published his first volume of poetry in 1974, in a period when the political situation in Romania was undergoing an important change. After a relatively liberal approach to culture during the late 1960’s, Romanian communism began shifting during the 1970s towards another episode of Stalinist cultural politics described as national communism. Markó’s poetry marks this shift with a disillusioned approach, and his poetry can be described as shifting from a nostalgic, community-oriented poetics towards an avant-garde imagery and a more reflexive approach of poetry. The article describes this shift by referring to the reception of Markó’s early volumes.