Daniel
Bănulescu

Daniel Bănulescu was born in Bucharest, Rumania, in 1960. After studying engineering, he first worked as a proof-reader, reporter and night watchman.

Daniel Bănulescu, who maintains that he entered “Rumanian literature as a protégée of skirts”, says of his own position within it: “Although he knows of hundreds of colleagues who are more talented than he is himself, the modest and gruff author sees only three great opportunities for Rumanian literature: the poet Daniel Bănulescu, the novelist Daniel Bănulescu, and the dramatist Daniel Bănulescu.”

Originally, the first volume of poetry “Ziua în care am fost publicat” (1987; The Day on which I was Published) was to appear in a magazine, but the censors were troubled by the sexual force of his texts. Only half of the original fifteen poems were printed. The missing poems were published in a second volume of poetry “Te voi iubi pân’ la sfâr?itul patulu” (1993; I Will Love You until the End of the Bed) after the fall of the dictatorship. Daniel Bănulescu finally secured his reputation as the controversial enfant terrible of contemporary Rumanian literature with his first novel “Te pup in fund, conducãtor iubit!” (1994; Kiss your Ass, Adored Leader! 2005), for which he received the prize of the Association of Rumanian Writers. The publication hit Rumania like a bomb and earned nothing but elegiac criticism: “A novel with a completely new timbre and a new sound, written with magical-fantastic realism and infinite Balkanism”.

These were the years after the revolution and the collapse of Ceausescu’s regime, a period in which there was still – if not for long – a tremendous mood of departure in Rumania; people pounced on everything that they had had to manage without in the past. This meant that the novel appeared in an edition of 20,000 that was already sensational for western standards and was able to become a classic of contemporary Rumanian literature. Today this novel – which does not settle with the amorality and cruelty of the Ceausescu regime in a moralising tone, but pictures them satirically – has lost nothing of its relevance and is still capable of causing a stir, for example in Internet forums and public discussions.

Since 2003, a volume of selected poems has been available in the edition per procura; German translation by Ernest Wichner, entitled “Schrumpeln wirst du wirst eine exotische Frucht sein” (You will wrinkle, you will become an exotic fruit). This volume received the “Prize for European Poetry from the City of Münster 2005”. Daniel B?nulescu writes a verbally powerful and sensual-erotic poetry; its provocative association of sexuality and religion is reminiscent of the aesthetics of Georges Bataille, François Villon or Charles Baudelaire. Desire is the focus of Bănulescu’s poetic universe: erotomania and the pathos of despairing lovers are caught up in a permanent, ironic conflict.