Ilarie Voronca - Telling the story of a young man who has a specialist replace his damaged soul with that of a soldier who has died in the war, this short surreal novel, at once haunting and beautiful, carries with it a powerful charm normally restricted to dreams.

Ilarie Voronca, The Confession of a False Soul,

Trans. by Sue Boswell, Snuggly Books, 2021

[1942]

Originally published in 1942, and here presented for the first time in English, expertly translated from the French by Sue Boswell, The Confession of a False Soul is one of avant-garde Romanian author Ilarie Voronca's most brilliant works of fiction. Telling the story of a young man who has a specialist replace his damaged soul with that of a soldier who has died in the war, this short surreal novel, at once haunting and beautiful, carries with it a powerful charm normally restricted to dreams. Written in a spare narrative style rich in poetic force and symbolism, The Confession of a False Soul transports the reader to a place between reality and illusion where love alone might be the only thing that is real.

Ilarie Voronca, The Key to Reality, Trans. by

Sue Boswell, Snuggly Books, 2022

"Everything I imagine exists. So what exists is greater than what I imagine."

Originally published in 1944, and here presented for the first time in English, expertly translated from the French by Sue Boswell, The Key to Reality, by the avant-garde Romanian author Ilarie Voronca, is one of the great surrealist short story collections. Featuring fifteen pieces of prose, including a selection of dream-like "notes", the present book introduces the reader to an office worker who has in his desk drawer, amongst other things, a horse and a tree; a story-teller who has a path running through his bedroom; a street vendor whose customers might be imaginary, as might be his wares. At once enchanting, visionary, and poignant, The Key to Reality is a masterpiece of narrative reflection that operates like a series of magic spells which, with great poetic beauty, transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

This masterful collection, the only volume of short fiction from Jewish Romanian poet and essayist Voronca (1903-1946), first published in 1944, makes its English-language debut in an expert translation from Boswell. With dazzling variety and philosophical weight, these 17 avant-garde stories prove both memorable and entertaining. The title tale, told in Voronca’s uniquely delicate prose, transitions from a sweeping account of the temporality of youth, to a probing rumination on existence, to a vivid depiction of life in poverty and sets the tone for the collection. Other standouts include the haunting “The Woman and Her Double,” about a man who creates sartorial fineries for a woman who exists in duplicate both in his mind and in reality, and “Colours,” centered on a merchant who sells colors to a gloomy town immersed entirely in gray. Voronca’s tales are both beautifully rendered (“Arriving one morning at a town’s gates when the street sweepers are throwing the remains of the night into the gutter, when the shops are greeting each other with the hoarse and sleepy voice of their iron drapes, when you want to lie down, if only on a carpet of grass to stop the peaceful waters of darkness leaving”) and wildly original. This is a gem. - Publishers Weekly

Ilarie Voronca, The Centaur Tree, Trans. by

Christina Tudor-Sideri, Sublunary Editions,

2022

"But in carriages, the snakes intertwine like garlic bundles, and the city surrounds me, it floods my house like a burst water pipe behind a wall. These metal bridges, these women in pools like huge crystal cups, these convoys of detainees, this hunger like a showcase of exotic fruits. Roads furrowed by the cough of some hedges, peas falling from the pod at the same time as bright skulls. Remnants of snow, more obscure than shards of glass after a feast. If you were to twirl with your beloved here, this debris of winter would cut your palms and thousands of rust ants would gush out of your veins."

Ilarie Voronca stands as the preeminent Romanian avant-garde poet of the 20th century, a writer whose texts treat images like a particle accelerator treats hydrogen atoms without ever losing clarity. The Centaur Tree is a selection from Voronca's Romanian prose poems and essays, drawing from the poet's formative years in which latent symbolism had not yet fully succumbed to the roiling undercurrents of modernism that would carry Voronca to France.

Ilarie Voronca (born Eduard Marcus), was a Romanian Jewish avant-garde poet, editor of Integral and 75HP magazines. He also used the pseudonym Alex Cernat Roneiro Valcia.

Voronca made his debut as a poet in 1922 in the Sburătorul literary magazine. A year later, he adopted a change in style, adhering to the modernist manifesto published in Contimporanul and began contributing to literary magazines such as Punct and Integral. In 1927, Voronca published a volume of poetry in Paris, entitled after his wife Colomba Voronca. He settled in France (1933) and began writing in the French language. Several of his works were illustrated with drawings by Constantin Brâncuşi, Marc Chagall and Victor Brauner. As French citizen, in 1938 Voronca took part in the French Resistance. He visited Romania in January 1946, and was acclaimed for his writings and anti-fascist activities. He never finished his Manuel du parfait bonheur [Manual for Perfect Happiness], committing suicide later that year.