Nina Cassian

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a poet. Born, brought up, and persecuted in Roumania, her life reflects her homeland's frightening uncertainties. An idyllic childhood on the banks of the Danube led to the Bucharest pogrom, the terrors of the Stalinist era, and in the nineteen seventies, the cruel and absurd regime of Ceausescu.

Presenter0:51

Throughout this time she wrote. She's published more than fifty books, fantasy, satires, poems, and written music. And then, thirteen years ago, on a visit to America, she was forbidden to return home. In exile, her mastery of the English language and her ability to translate the spirit of her homeland have made her a passionate and lively literary figure. Poets, she says, never leave country, territory, or language of their own free will, but I had no choice. She is Nina Cassian. You certainly had no choice, Nina. You were declared a non person overnight. You were just written out of everything in your homeland. That must have been a paralysing experience.

Nina Cassian1:33

Actually I uh

Nina Cassian1:36

went to America to teach a course of creative writing at New York University. And it's during that period of three months that I found out that my friend

Nina Cassian1:49

Georgie Ursu?

Nina Cassian1:50

who was an engineer and also a poet, who kept a diary for forty years I don't know how many thousands of pages. Nobody read it, by the way, not even his wife.

Presenter2:02

But it was a diary criticising

Nina Cassian2:03

It was a diary in which he yes, he inserted all the events for forty years in a critical way, with comments whatever.

Nina Cassian2:13

For the last period, the Ceausescu period, he didn't mention their names, but called Ceausescu the paranoic and his wife the sow.

Presenter2:23

So they'd seized these diaries of his from his

Nina Cassian2:25

Yes, at first he was only under investigation when he came to my place and told me, Listen, you are frequently mentioned in my diary.

Nina Cassian2:34

With your political opinions, with your sarcastic words concerning the

Nina Cassian2:40

excuse me, royal couple. But I still I got my passport and I went to America and I thought and during that period I found out that he was arrested and finally that he died. The details about his death we found about uh out about them uh afterwards, that he was tortured and beaten to death.

Presenter3:00

But you were then effectively cut off. You couldn't go back. You would also have been tortured, presumably.

Nina Cassian3:04

I've been

Nina Cassian3:05

I thought the moment was too hot for me to go back right away, but I didn't want to ask for political asylum because I knew what will happen. I mean that they are going to erase me as a person and taking away all my my library and my belongings and whatever. So I hesitated for one year and a half, but I had no choice finally. I couldn't get a job. I couldn't prolong my visas. I mean to have a status. So finally I had to ask for political asylum. But it must be

Presenter3:35

That that kind of experience and and having nowhere to go back to, being cut off and having lost everything, it must be a kind of death.

Nina Cassian3:43

I felt like being trapped, literally, like being trapped, I mean, in a foreign country, surrounded by foreign people, by a foreign language. And as a poet I you can't imagine yourself, but

Nina Cassian3:56

expressing yourself in your mother tongue. It's uh it seems an impossibility.

Speaker 43:59

Yeah.

Nina Cassian4:03

to uh change voices, you know, like uh boys in adolescence when they change voices. It it seemed impossible at first. Finally I did it.

Presenter4:13

You've done it. There's a lot of humour. There's a lot of love, but there's also a

Presenter4:25

A pervading sense of loneliness underneath it all. It is.

Nina Cassian4:28

It is, uh especially after the death of my husband. So I was deprived of e everything coming to America. I found myself uh lonely like uh a rusted coffin nail. I don't know.

Nina Cassian4:44

Terrible.

Presenter4:44

Can I ask you perhaps to to read us an example of that? Because there's a poem I I know that you've written since you were stranded in the States, and it's the image of you, a a woman in her sixties, t travelling on the New York subway.

Nina Cassian4:57

Please give this seat to an elderly or disabled person.

Nina Cassian5:03

I stood during the entire journey. Nobody offered me a seat, although I was at least a hundred years older than any one else on board.

Nina Cassian5:15

Although the signs of at least three major afflictions were visible on me pride,

Nina Cassian5:23

Loneliness and Art.

Presenter5:27

Tell me about your first desert island disc.

Nina Cassian5:30

Yes, I chose this part of Bach's Matthew's passion.

Nina Cassian5:36

Because this masterpiece

Nina Cassian5:39

Is somehow the essence of all music of all times. Bach is always.

Nina Cassian5:46

Above and beyond everything else, he stays there in his aura forever.

Speaker 46:00

Silly score at

Speaker 46:06

And never have a heart or since you

Speaker 46:16

A zee in wont a silent avenge, yet has thy fruit and quite restored.

Speaker 46:29

He shook the handle, swooped and

Speaker 46:38

The teeth would see their flame.

Presenter6:53

Michael Chance, singing Ach Galgetter from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, with the English Baroque soloists conducted by John Elliott Gardner. You mention uh music quite often in your poetry, Nina. Uh Bach drops into a poem called It Was Love, it was a love like a chord from Bach you wrote. Um a lot of love poems, most of them perhaps about your second husband to whom you were married for thirty-five years. Readers a poem, I think it's an early one you wrote about his kisses.

Nina Cassian7:22

Yes, that was in our early um

Nina Cassian7:25

Marriage

Nina Cassian7:27

But that doesn't mean that the sensation didn't last even after that.

Nina Cassian7:31

Kisses

Nina Cassian7:33

Our kisses hundreds, thousands, even millions, who knows? I never counted them.

Nina Cassian7:41

They're battles all kisses, heavy, slow, hurtful, where blood, voice, and memory all take part.

Nina Cassian7:49

Oh, how jealous I am of the water you drink, and of the words you speak, of your blue sighs, jealous of those unjust partings of our mouths

Nina Cassian8:05

Yeah.

Presenter8:05

And he saw you through it all, through these the ghastly experience of these totalitarian regimes that you lived under.

Presenter8:13

Your first book, as I understand it, under uh Stalin, you wrote just after the war, it it was not only banned, it was burned, wasn't it? What was so terrible about it?

Nina Cassian8:21

I suppose so. Uh I I don't know exactly the facts. Anyway, it disappeared. And it was such an innocent book, I think. It had, in my opinion, nothing subversive. It was a book of uh fantasy, of uh joy, uh colorful, full of uh metaphors and so on, in the orbit, if you want, of Apollinaire, Marc Jacob, the fantasist, Les Poet Francesiste, Franci, because as you know, we almost almost all uh the Romanian poets grew in in the orbit of the French modern poetry.

Nina Cassian8:59

Uh that was our second language.

Presenter9:01

So was it ever defined under these regimes what you could and couldn't write? Did they say surrealism is out? Fantasy is out. Out.

Nina Cassian9:08

Out by all means. That was decadent. That uh belonged to a uh declining uh human society. It wasn't written for the people to understand. Now here I must underline something. What they thought people understand or don't understand was a proof of their uh ignorance and their despising the people because people understood more than they thought. Of course. They uh obliged us to use a limited vocabulary as if uh all people around us were illiterates and not to use metaphors, which is uh absurd because our folk poetry is full of metaphors or adjectives. Okay, I wrote a poem about the sea and I said that the sea was yellowish in the the twilight because of the sun, etcetera. And I said, No, the sea is blue.

Presenter10:05

Tell me about your second record.

Nina Cassian10:07

Oh, uh that has to do with my childhood actually. Isn't that a fantastic childhood to grow up

Nina Cassian10:16

surrounded by music and poetry, as I was, and I heard first in my early childhood The Sorcerer's Apprentice, based on a Goethe poem.

Nina Cassian10:28

So I had a mixture of those two arts, uh you know, combining and uh befriending each other.

Nina Cassian10:37

So that sorcerer's apprentice opened my my mind and my imagination to poetry and music together.

Presenter11:40

Part of The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Ducas, played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Macaris.

Presenter11:46

So it was a very happy childhood, uh that that early part of it, and quite a a cultured one. You were listening to this kind of music, you were aware of poetry, you apparently wrote your first poem and composed a a waltz on the piano, aged five.

Nina Cassian12:00

Yes, a pretty stupid one, I must confess. But anyway, that uh shows that it wasn't my choice to become a poet or a composer or whatever. It just happened or maybe if I wu if I'll be uh very um cocky, I would say I was chosen.

Presenter12:19

But you were, what, about eleven when the family moved to Bucharest, nineteen thirty five. And um that was really the end of um an idyllic childhood, wasn't it?

Nina Cassian12:23

Yeah, 1935.

Nina Cassian12:29

That was uh the the end of the f temporarily, the end of the fairy tale, yes, because uh my father was unemployed, we were very poor.

Presenter12:38

What were your first impressions of the city?

Nina Cassian12:39

Passion

Nina Cassian12:41

I didn't like it. It was flat.

Nina Cassian12:43

I adored Brashov, Kronstadt. It had hills and mountains and uh four very well delimitated seasons. I mean, spring was spring and summer was summer and winters. The winters were absolutely sumptuous with the snow and so on. Bucharest was ugly, but uh I became ugly too.

Nina Cassian13:06

Because at first I was a cute little girl with a small nose and a round chin, and at eleven

Nina Cassian13:13

Things changed.

Nina Cassian13:15

like in an earthquake.

Presenter13:17

You also, I think, began to feel the effects of anti-Semitism, didn't you?

Nina Cassian13:21

Oh, yes. Uh, actually, uh, even in Brashov I uh had a feeling that

Nina Cassian13:27

I I was beginning to be attacked and pointed at. I don't know if you read uh that Max Frisch's um play called Andorra.

Nina Cassian13:38

Uh the main character is a young man who is not Jewish, who was only raised by a Jewish family.

Nina Cassian13:46

But he is persecuted as a Jew and almost crucified.

Nina Cassian13:51

Uh the the idea of the play is that you are not born Jew, you are made.

Nina Cassian13:57

A Jew

Presenter13:59

And is that how you felt?

Nina Cassian14:00

That's how I felt because my parents were not religious. I I had no feeling of really being Jewish. Of course, according to the papers, I probably am. But I'm not attached to this s specific community. I'm much more international and

Presenter14:00

The

Nina Cassian14:17

Much more open what they made me.

Presenter14:20

They pointed at you.

Nina Cassian14:20

Yes, they pointed at me.

Presenter14:23

And as a result of all of that, you turned away and you embraced communism.

Nina Cassian14:28

It's not because of that. That would have been a too narrow uh goal or target for me. I wanted it all. I was very greedy, as I say in a poem.

Nina Cassian14:38

Communism for me was a kind of a golden sphere.

Nina Cassian14:43

harmonious which abolished all the the bloody antagonisms between the races, classes, genders. It was the big, big, big embrace.

Presenter14:53

Tell me about record number three.

Presenter14:55

Yeah.

Nina Cassian14:55

Well

Nina Cassian14:57

I love Messian because he is incredibly vital. He has his spirituality and his mystic and whatever, but the approach and the the the sound is so tremendously vital and terrestrial. And I like the combination.

Presenter16:18

Joanna McGregor playing part of Messien's Vanguard sur l'Enfant Jesus.

Presenter16:24

The fact is, of course, Nina Cassian, that you went along with the Stalinist view of life, as you said you wrote for the people in the way that they decreed should be written.

Presenter16:35

Looking back, why do you why do you think you were so gullible? Why do you think you didn't spot that it was all about control and dictatorship?

Nina Cassian16:47

Well, at first

Nina Cassian16:49

When I was told how to write, I thought they are right.

Nina Cassian16:55

that that it should be and the party knew better because I was too young and unexperienced and whatever. But uh I realized very quickly that it um

Nina Cassian17:06

made me dry, it emptied me of all um joy of writing, so I stopped.

Nina Cassian17:13

And I turned to music, which was a wonderful refuge. I composed music in the time and to books for children. I mean, my obsession with the fairy tales. That was my uh solution for the time, for the time being. But did you realize

Presenter17:26

I did

Presenter17:27

I found it.

Nina Cassian17:27

That you

Presenter17:27

were you you were being heavily compromised, obviously. Thi did and did you not stop to think?

Presenter17:34

Why is this happening?

Presenter17:35

Can this be right?

Nina Cassian17:37

Not at first, all I realized was that I became incapable of going on, so I I just was was empty.

Nina Cassian17:45

I know now that it was a gigantic lie, that those wonderful ideas which keep their halo in some way

Nina Cassian17:55

They are logical, they are uh beautiful, uh

Speaker 117:56

There

Nina Cassian17:59

They were just taken as pretext to install bloody dictatorships all over. And probably Communism will probably remain a utopia never to be achieved.

Presenter18:15

Next piece of music.

Nina Cassian18:16

Well

Nina Cassian18:18

I think that Bartok together with Shostakovich

Nina Cassian18:22

are somehow the two Beethovens of the twentieth century. I know this might sound like a blasphemy in some ways, but why should it? Geniuses go on. I mean, i it's not at the end of the line it doesn't stop with Beethoven, of course. That's why I like Baltok to be with me on the desert island.

Presenter19:42

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing part of Bartok's music for strings, percussion, and celesta, conducted by Pierre Boulez. You wrote many poems, Nina, about the privations that you and the people of Roumania suffered under Charlescu.

Presenter19:58

Um l let's hear one of them. What about a a dream of drought, which I think you wrote in the early eighties? Okay, a dream

Nina Cassian20:05

Time of drought.

Nina Cassian20:07

Water's getting dearer.

Nina Cassian20:09

I'd better learn to swim in dust and drink mud.

Nina Cassian20:16

Birds leave in the autumn and don't return in the spring.

Nina Cassian20:22

Blue cloth's getting dearer. I'd better get used to wearing black.

Nina Cassian20:28

Even fish scales of any size have registered a rise.

Nina Cassian20:36

Uh

Presenter20:36

Fish scales, which were used for making soup. Scales. Yes, exactly. So hunger, cold.

Nina Cassian20:42

Hunger, yes. Cold and darkness. They uh turned us into moles, into I mean, we lost all dignity.

Nina Cassian20:53

being always afraid, you know, about the cold, actually he stopped the electricity not according to a specific schedule.

Nina Cassian21:02

Uh but randomly. So babies, newborn babies, died in incubators because of that. Well he's stopping.

Presenter21:11

Turned it off willfully.

Nina Cassian21:11

Turned it off willfully.

Nina Cassian21:14

I was sleeping with my fur coat and under blankets and with a hood, but my eyes were freezing.

Presenter21:23

Is that what you mean when you say that um although Stalin terrorized you as a nation, Ceausescu exterminated us?

Nina Cassian21:31

Yes, yes, I have that feeling because in Stalin times, you know, if you were put in prison, of course I don't agree with putting people in jails and executing and so it was cruel and terrible. But those people could keep somehow their inner convictions or beliefs or whatever. In Ceaușescu's time the process was so perverse.

Nina Cassian21:59

So uh surreptitious.

Nina Cassian22:02

You destroyed us inside.

Nina Cassian22:06

Did you ever meet him?

Nina Cassian22:08

Just once uh we had an interview a group of writers, but he was so evasive he didn't look you in the eyes, and he was stuttering all the time when he was emotional.

Presenter22:20

Did you have uh the courage to speak out? Did you really tell him what you felt?

Nina Cassian22:24

You sat across

Presenter22:24

Yeah.

Presenter22:26

You sat across the table.

Nina Cassian22:27

I mean, he didn't jail us for uh telling the truth, but he didn't change uh a bit. So that was it. That was his uh being smart. He let us talk.

Nina Cassian22:40

We could also write somehow subversive poems, so called, and they were published.

Presenter22:45

Like the one you've just read.

Nina Cassian22:46

Like the one I just said. That was published, because he said, Let them play. You know, that kept us quiet in some way. We didn't start any turmoil, socially speaking. We wrote what we wanted and we saw it published. So this was for us the supreme satisfaction.

Presenter22:47

That would have been possible.

Presenter23:09

Mech would number five.

Nina Cassian23:12

I'm rather attached to uh

Nina Cassian23:15

music for piano because I'm playing myself the piano. And one of my uh favorite short piece is WC. Okay, he's a great, great, great composer, but this

Nina Cassian23:27

Piece called La Plucke Lante, which I mentioned, by the way, in one of my last poems.

Nina Cassian23:33

It's

Nina Cassian23:35

A love peace. It's about a love ma but it's la plucalante. It's about a special love.

Nina Cassian23:43

A love of um nuances. It's not y like this, I love you. It's I love you in a very special way.

Presenter24:52

Catherine Stott playing part of Debussy's La Plucolante. You've been very uh disparaging about your looks, Nina. You talk about there having been a a cross to Carrie, and how you've suffered. Do you want to read a couple of stanzas self portrait, you call this one? What about the first two stanzas there?

Nina Cassian25:07

That's two stars.

Nina Cassian25:09

Yes, the self portrait. I was given at birth this odd triangular face, the sugared cone that you see now.

Nina Cassian25:21

The figurehead jutting from some pirate prow.

Nina Cassian25:25

framed by trailing strands of moonlike hair.

Nina Cassian25:29

This jointed shape I'm destined to carry around And thrust out steadily through endless days, Wounding the retinas of those who gaze On the twisted shadow I cast upon the ground.

Presenter25:47

Very harsh on yourself.

Nina Cassian25:48

Uh

Presenter25:48

Yeah.

Nina Cassian25:48

That is scary.

Presenter25:49

It doesn't seem to have affected your relationships with men, though. It has to be said. I mean, you've had your share.

Speaker 425:54

Per Joshua.

Nina Cassian25:55

No, uh eventually it did not. Probably I compensa compensate with some other uh qualities. I don't know. There must be some balance in my existence.

Presenter26:07

But that poem, along with others spanning some forty-five years of your life, w was published here in the States and here in a collection called Life Sentence in nineteen ninety. They were translated, of course, from the Roumanian, some a lot of them by other people, and some by you. Are you happy with them? Do they lose in the terms?

Nina Cassian26:25

Uh more or less. Mainly I am happy because I I was lucky to enjoy the participation of uh very good poets and translators, uh to mention only Richard Wilber,

Nina Cassian26:38

and um um um Caroline Kaiser and Stanley Kunitz and uh here in England Fleur Adcock for one of my poems and

Nina Cassian26:48

But what I did, because uh those people didn't speak Romanian, they don't know Romanian, I uh offered them.

Nina Cassian26:55

Already a possible version.

Nina Cassian26:58

of the poem.

Speaker 426:58

Hmm.

Nina Cassian26:59

And you know, for me it's easy when I cannot find well, I translate myself into English. If I cannot find the perfect translation, I look for an equivalent or I change the original. I do whatever I want with myself. But of course I'm my own master.

Presenter27:11

Yeah.

Presenter27:14

Of course, but also obviously what you need to do is capture the spirit of what's in the

Nina Cassian27:18

That's it, the general atmosphere and the punch of it. That's all.

Presenter27:23

But your your English obviously must have improved a lot over the past thirteen years.

Nina Cassian27:27

I suppose so I hope so.

Presenter27:30

Yeah.

Nina Cassian27:30

Well now

Presenter27:30

Are you right in English?

Nina Cassian27:31

Yeah, I do.

Presenter27:33

And how easy is that for you? Are you enjoying that?

Nina Cassian27:36

Are you enjoying it? Because I didn't do it, you know, with a certain application and perseverance and didactically or like it just came. And it wasn't an ambition for me to write in English. I thought it will I will never be able to do so. But you translated Shakespeare, you translated from English to Romanian.

Presenter27:56

And I think it's a threat.

Presenter27:58

I see.

Nina Cassian27:59

But not vice versa.

Presenter28:00

But your your your Shakespeare your Hamlet has been performed at the National Theatre in Roumaine. That's true.

Nina Cassian28:04

That's true, but especially my masterpiece, if I might say so, is Midsummer Night's Dream. A masterpiece I did in this translation with a great help from the author. But I did it.

Presenter28:17

Wait, is it

Presenter28:18

Record number six.

Nina Cassian28:20

I was when I first heard uh the young person's guide, I think Sir John Barbirali was in Romania at some point and he played it, I was very impressed not only for its uh didactical side, because it tr truly teaches you orchestra and orchestration, but for its wit and um humour.

Nina Cassian28:44

It makes me laugh.

Presenter29:38

Benjamin Britton conducting the London Symphony and English Chamber Orchestras playing his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

Presenter29:45

People will be asking, of course, Nina, why doesn't she go back? Why doesn't she reclaim her territory, her language, her life, her people?

Nina Cassian29:54

Uh I went back, actually. I was eight times in Romania after the revolution. But I have no place to stay here. I think I have to say in a parenthesis.

Nina Cassian30:06

The authorities never liked me. Absolutely never. Not the former ones, not the current ones. And by authority I mean starting with the doorman, up to the prime minister or to the the the king, I don't know. So I wanted to have a place to stay stay. They forbade me, they uh kicked me out, I found a place, they kicked me out from that place, so I was literally and practically I was banned from Romania twice, once before the revolution and the second time after.

Presenter30:38

One

Presenter30:41

This is since you still you can't really go back.

Nina Cassian30:43

Uh I can, but I have no place to stay. I can stay on the street if I want. They they they don't

Presenter30:50

And why do you think that is?

Nina Cassian30:51

I don't know.

Nina Cassian30:53

Maybe because of my looks.

Presenter30:56

I've no idea. But you have a a very good reason for not going back now, of course, which is that you've married again an American called Maurice.

Nina Cassian31:01

Well, an American Cold War in the meantime. But even so, I would like to stay part-time in Romania and part-time in America. Yes, now I have a new husband.

Presenter31:09

I'm in

Presenter31:12

And and is that relationship responsible as much as anything for giving you back your appetite for life?

Nina Cassian31:19

Um partly, yes. You hesitate to say so.

Presenter31:22

You hesitate to say so.

Nina Cassian31:23

Uh

Presenter31:23

You hesitate.

Nina Cassian31:24

But I yeah, I hesitate because my suicidal training I acquired after my second husband's death is still there. I feel that I'm uh very uh well acquainted with death, you know, very well. Um uh w when I was around fifty

Nina Cassian31:43

I had an encephalitis due to a virus. I was paralyzed on the right side and speechless, and I entered a coma for three days. And I must tell you that I enjoyed it.

Presenter31:57

Record number seven.

Nina Cassian31:58

Yeah.

Presenter31:58

Yeah.

Nina Cassian31:58

Yeah.

Nina Cassian31:59

As a Faux Chopin.

Nina Cassian32:01

I think that he's still partly misunderstood.

Nina Cassian32:06

Uh the um people consider him, you know, sentimental uh romantic. He is romantic, but he's also extremely rigorous.

Nina Cassian32:15

This mazulka proves his subtlety and his vanguard spirit.

Presenter33:24

Vladimir Ashkenazi playing part of Chopin's Mazurka in A minor, opus seventeen, number four. Do you think you'd survive on a desert island, Nina?

Presenter33:34

Uh

Presenter33:35

Yeah.

Nina Cassian33:35

Um

Nina Cassian33:37

Since I told you that I was suicidal, I don't know why I should survive. But anyway, I think I could, yes.

Presenter33:44

And you're not afraid of death, as you said, but you you

Nina Cassian33:48

I'm afraid of a long painful sickness, but not of death.

Presenter33:53

I think we should um finish by asking you to read one more poem. And and what about one about your present husband, um the one called Singing and Barking?

Nina Cassian34:03

Hmm.

Nina Cassian34:04

He sleeps in my bed like an enormous lizard, he says. He says a lot.

Nina Cassian34:12

He is full, like a hive, of golden brown, humming, stinging words.

Nina Cassian34:19

I answer with words, they marry, they divorce, they remarry, they kiss and bite each other, they sing and walk.

Nina Cassian34:29

He says, Instead of weightlifting, I lift your breasts and exhaust myself with ecstasy.

Nina Cassian34:37

He is good at words and at breathlifting. Take my word for it.

Presenter34:42

What a wonderful poem. Tell me about your last record.

Nina Cassian34:48

I like jazz and I like folk music and I like pop music. But I have a special relationship with Bertolt Brecht and through Bertolbrecht with Gudweil. These words are by Ogden Nash, which is also one of my favourite poets for his wit, for his humour, for his linguistic inventions. And this speak low is also an insinuating song. As you see, I prefer from the expression of love, not the plain one, not the most direct one, a little aside, a little insinuating, like that speak low.

Speaker 435:33

Yeah.

Speaker 435:37

Ooh, when you speak love.

Speaker 435:41

Our summer day withers away Too soon, too soon Speak low when you speak love Our moment is swift Like ships adrift We're swept apart too soon

Presenter36:03

Lottalenia singing Speak Low from the musical One Touch of Venus, words by Ogden Nash, music by Courtweil. If you could only take one of those eight records, Nina, which one would you take?

Nina Cassian36:15

Probably uh Matthew's passion.

Presenter36:18

The Bach.

Nina Cassian36:19

Yeah.

Presenter36:20

What about your book? You've we give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare in English. Well, you can have them in Romanian if you want to translate them. What extra book would you like?

Nina Cassian36:25

Boom.

Nina Cassian36:26

Well you can have them in Romanian if you want to translate them.

Nina Cassian36:32

I was uh thinking either of um Les Champs de Marder.

Nina Cassian36:39

By Le Comte de Lotramont, his real name was Isidore Ducas.

Nina Cassian36:46

Uh I know it's n he's not well known uh here, but he's a fantastic stylist. Like, I don't know to whom to compare him to.

Nina Cassian36:55

to Melville, to James Joyce, I don't know. Or if I cannot take this one, I will take we need the proof.

Nina Cassian37:06

Well, who's going to choose?

Presenter37:07

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. And what about your luxury?

Nina Cassian37:10

What about

Nina Cassian37:11

Luxury. Well, of course everybody says I would like to have paper and a pen and a small piano. That would be nice.

Nina Cassian37:19

Uh but uh if that's not quite uh a luxury, I would like to have uh cigarettes and whisky.

Presenter37:28

Nina Cassian, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 137:38

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.