New Sea Urchin chapbook:
Cuptor, subtitled Iulie (=July) was first published in 1906 in the literary journal Romanul literar and republished as part of Bacovia’s renowned compilation Plumb ten years later. The dark and morbid imagery of the poem make it an example of Romanian Francophile Symbolism, which was influenced by Baudelaire and his translations of Edgar Allan Poe. Having been taught German at an early age, Bacovia was not only familiar with Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe but also with Friedrich Nietzsche and other precursors of German Expressionism. Furnace is then as much a Symbolist as an early Expressionist poem. The poem, now handsomely published in the series of Sea Urchin chapbooks, is a cruel love song carrying whiffs of putrefaction under a sledgehammer sun. Furnace is an instant heat stroke.