AL FLORIN ŢENE

REFERINTE CRITICE SELECTIVE

SELECTIVE CRITICAL REFERENCES

1. Al. Florin Tene(the author of OCHI DESCHIS and FUGA STATUILOR, published in Bucuresti) unveils himself to us as a distinct poetical sensibility, creator of the most discrete atmosphere, delicate and nostalgic at the same time. C. ZARNESCU

2. Dear comrade Tene, you are an authentic talent, with a healthy orientation.

Dan Desliu

3. FUGA STATUILOR, Al. Florin Tene’s volume of verse, announces in a register of unaffected musical simplicity, the possible deep harmonies of maturity.

IONEL BOTA

4. The poet and publicist Al. Florin Tene finds himself with NUCUL DINTRE DOUA VEACURI at his third volume, published at ‘Floare de Colt’ publishing house in Belgium. Knowing also his poetry from the magazine RADIX, which is published by the above-mentioned publishing house, I notice how the author cultivate in this volume too the sensibility and the aspiration of the intimate communion with the elements which are included in the space of the Country. DIANA TIHU

5. An old poet friend of mine, Al. Florin Tene, who has spent his youth in the Dragasani region, practises in NUCUL DINTRE DOUA VEACURI poetry of the feelings, with the sap of the themes in the roots of our abodes (…). The volume opens the eyes of our heart to Mother’s prayers. IOAN BARBU

6. The eulogy of the Romanian language constituted a well-structured ensemble within the framework of the volume NUCUL DINTRE DOUA VEACURI, being considered like a fundamental instrument through the means of which the being enters the state of rediscovery of the communication with oneself. DIANA TIHU

7. In all, the volume CERUL MEU DE HARTIE adds other values of style at Al. Florin Tene’s up to now work, confirming the bracing tonality of inspiration and the aesthetic and noble dimension of the poems. In all of them pulsates the man of the city, the authentic Romanian poet, responsible for the destinies of our language, which he modulates in waves, like his destiny has decided.

With a good knowledge of books, Al. Florin Tene has registered, by means of this novel, the level of a very good ambassador.

8. In the depth of the novel CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA, Al Florin Tene unfolds a self-search of the reader and a gradual clarification of the mirror.

The reading, the reflection is done at night, while the author-character submerges in sleep In the mirror, we can see the author asleep, and the character in a state of vigil, judging him, self-judging. DUMITRU VELEA

9. Al. Florin Tene comes from the line of those obsessions, which apparently have nothing to do with the subtitle of the novel CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA. The novel is what could be called a composite novel, in which frame one could discover a vigorous writer. DORIN SERGHE

10. Through CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA, Al. Florin Tene practises a genuine novel with a technique, which reminds of Proust. The conclusion is clear: we don’t presume the author to be original, but he is original and above all he is talented.

MARIN TUDOR

11. CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA is the book of a harsh realism, of the fragments of harsh life lived by some characters created with

faithfulness after some originals studied with care and with the skill of a specialist. DUMITRU HURUBA

12. The novel CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA has a marked autobiographical aspect, the author essentially transcribing his existence on the building site of Voineasa, Rm. Valcea, between 1970-1971, when he edited the publication “Lumina de pe Lotru” there. The writing has a modern aspect because he makes use of the diary format, of retro and memo insertions, passing by narrators, the stereophonic structure, lack of heroism and lack of personalization (…). The mirror turned to the past also becomes the mirror of the future, homage to those who have sacrificed themselves for the times we live today. MIRCEA POPA

13.Beautiful is also the short interview, which Al. Florin Tene managed to get from Mircea Sucan, the original and valued prose writer and cineaste retired at Nazareth, who after concise testimonies about his childhood in Ardeal and about his family, said that he hates interviews, which humiliate and degrade him and that he prefers to talk through films and books…

ALEX. STEFANESCU

14. Interesting mainly through its approached epic formula, the novel CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA by Al. Florin Tene recommends an anxious writer, trying to interpret, through explorations of consciousness, the dimension of his existential reality from a historic perspective, but not in the least artistic. It is an inciting novel, able to impose the personality of an accomplished writer in actuality (…)

CONSTANTIN CUBLESAN

15. In all, through Al. Florin Tene’s lyricism, delicate nostalgias circulate on marine horizons, sentimental exultations of adolescent purity, which give freshness, I would say tender frustration, to the feeling of love as a conspicuous mark in his present stage of creation. CONSTANTIN CUBLESAN

16. Al. Florin Tene from Valcea, acclimatized in Cluj, writes an intensely communicative poetry, based on the force of the expression of the symbol and of the verbal suggestion.

ADRIAN TION

17. In prose, Al Florin Tene knows to lead the reader up to the causing edge of the problems. ADRIAN TION

18. Bearing in mind the childhood with the smiling face of his mother, Al. Florin Tene has found consolation in writing and offering us, through this complex novel, a document about a memory which he has experienced, with or without our permission and which we are not allowed to forget.

NICOLAE UTICA

19. Al. Florin Tene is one of those writers who has endeavoured more to elaborate his writing than to make waves round his own person; and the editorial “proof” on the way to be published will double the number of his published works until now; at the same time, this is the proof of a broad fan of literary preoccupations: verse, historical drama, literary chronicles, journalism and investigations. Even if he hadn’t written and published but the novel CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA, the writer from Valcea (born.13^th June 1942) would have occupied a forefront place in any literary hierarchy drawn up on values criteria then when the time will have made a selection of poet-December spiritual productions. ION ROSIORU

20. Al. Florin Tene, though a poet, is by vocation an important contemporary writer geared, through originality and style, in decoding social valences. PETRICA BIRAU

21. Accustomed with Al. Florin Tene to sign books of poetry, a novel by this author seems at least a fact related to the change of the modality of artistic expression and creation (…) The motive of the mirror, well known in literature, is to be found in Al. Florin Tene’s novel in an inciting form at least..

VERONICA BALAJ

22. With a coherent artistic logic, the poet originates from the stock that lives to the full, from those who make from imagination a means of existence of the inner self.

DUMITRU VELEA

23. I would say that Al. Florin Tene’s novel; CARTEA DIN OGLINDA is not a secretary’s book (…). The narrative, with many parenthesis and dogmatically eradicated, incites by its density, by the tension of moral customary laws, cited or not respected by its characters, by its clean style, reserved in many silences, by the revelation of the secret existence from the depth of the human. ION ARCAS

24. In DICTIONARUL DE POETI by Petru Poanta, our colleague into writing, Al. Florin Tene, “ESTE BATRANUL = IS THE OLD MAN” of a clan of poets from Oltenia settled in Cluj- Napoca (…) I must tell you that I took part, together with Al. Florin Tene, in an “internal” championship of writers, and I was not in the least surprised that after he had drawn game with me, he had taken revenge on the president Ulici himself, who, in the final, he made “checkmate” through a “literary sneeze” , as Calinescu would also name the epigram.

NEGOITA IRIMIE

25. Thursday, 24^th June 1999, at the Hotel ‘ Ambasador – Hilton”(Salonul Diplomatilor) Bucuresti, our friend, the Romanian literary critic and writer from Cluj- Napoca, Florin Tene was awarded “Best European Journalist – for the protection of the environment” by the Ambassador of France in Bucuresti. This prize comes as an international recognition of his merits, who, for four decades, has been intensely “toiling” in the Romanian and European literature, as a poet, novelist and theatrical critic, being always present at the premieres of the ‘ION D. SARBU’ DRAMATIC THEATRE of Petrosani, writing theatrical reviews and enabling the publication of the writers from Vale in the literary magazines he has had access to. Always to have this kind of Friend! PETRISOR CIORBEA

26. The novel INSULA VISCOLULUI by Al. Florin Tene, happens on ample spaces and with many and diverse characters, like the novels from the Russian literature.

BENIAMIN PASCU

27. Al. Florin Tene is a novelist who gives here the entire measure of his ability of narration. It is the novel of his maturity. It is the attitude quota he has reached now, as a writer interested not only in the technique of the narration, but also in a profound ideate fund. CONSTANTIN CUBLESAN

28. (…) in the two novels published until now, CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA(1977) and INSULA VISCOLULUI.(2000), Al Florin Tene appears as an able handler of narrative plans.

ADRIAN TION

29. INSULA VISCOLULUI by Al. Florin Tene is a novel of impressive scope, which inscribes itself amongst the contemporary Romanian literary masterpieces; it reveals to us an author in full creative force, who renders us the confidence in the Romanian spirit, which had been stifled by the flames of iniquities (internally and externally); this fact is presented by the author through an extraordinary metaphoric vision at the end of the novel, emphasizing the passage beyond the power of fire, through the belief in Jesus Christ. PETRICA BIRAU

30. A complex voice, Al. Florin Tene cultivates, sometimes, a solemn and stern style in poems which exalts the everlasting values of the Romanian history and culture (…) Moving and melancholic, writing, in elegant poems, about the simple joys of life with the accents of a reflexive gravity, adopting now an ironic accent, now an unexpected taste of the patriarch. Al. Florin Tene crosses with his last volume a good hour of his poetic destiny. ION CRISTOFOR

31. Al. Florin Tene’s expressionist force in INSULA VISCOLULUI proves to us that the author is a voice of reference in nowadays-Romanian literature; the novel is an staggering confession and its success consists in its stylistic virtuosity and fidelity in truth. PETRU SCUTELNICU

32. INSULA VISCOLULUI by Al. Florin Tene is a fresco of the Romanian society in the 20th century, a novel that will certainly remain inscribed in the history of literature with golden letters. If today, this novel hasn’t been written so much about, it’s due to the same well-known fact that the author doesn’t belong to any literary group. AL. STROIE

33. If for Dumitru Velea the novel INSULA VISCOLULUI is a “bifurcation of Borgerse’s paths”, I consider that Al. Florin Tene has also “orthy” elements, through the intensity of the conflicts of an impressionist nuance; but, above all, an authentic structure, originally “tene” has been installed, of which there will be a lot of talk in the future. The novel INSULA VISCOLULUI is one of the most dramatic novels in the contemporary literature (…) ADRIANA STANCU

34. Reading is always a joy associated with revelation by all those who make meditation the beauty and the joy of their existence. Al. Florin Tene’s recent novel, INSULA VISCOLULUI creates this joy of reading, giving one the feeling of “impersonal rising” to the world of art (…)

This way, one discovers not only a book, but a special universe. ANISOARA DOBRE

35. The tendency of surprising the most diverse national and social media makes the novel a fresco of great proportions, like IN CREDINTA CELOR SAPTE SFESNICE by Victor Papilian (where the actions takes place in Turda), or with some novels by Ion Lancrajan, whose writing Al. Florin Tene has rather many affinities with, most of all in those areas of the story which recall the Hortist atrocities in the North of Ardeal, torn apart as a result of the Diktat and where the writer achieves some of his best pages. MIRCEA POPA

36. If a writer originating from Oltenia and settled in Transilvania has dared to break the silence on a rather sensitive topic, it means that he has an immense quantity of sincerity, of belief and of peace in himself. But above all, he has got talent, about which literary history will certainly record.

TEODOR BARBU

37. An ample novel with a high level of spiritual complexity, INSULA VISCOLULUI, together with CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA, joins not only the great contemporary literary works, but also the evocative historic cycle of the epoch in which we live and it remains as a confession submitted by a destiny – Al. Florin Tene, bestowed with The Lord’s blessing, which we would generally call genius. PETRICA BIRAU

38.Remaining a poet of the deep logos and the telluric, the poet builds himself on the line of the great values of the national poetry, in a harmonious hypostasis of durability.

MIRCEA POPA

39. Not refusing the patterns of a bright classicism, Al. Florin Tene practises a tempered modernism, being specialized in the volume CERUL MEU DE HARTIE/ MY PAPER SKY, in a kind of urban reverie, mixture of mythology and bookish hallucination. MONICA STRATULESCU

40. Al. Florin Tene, in his new volume of verse, bilingual

(English- Romanian), published in Yugoslavia, in the excellent translation of the married couple Mariana Zavati Gardner and John Edward Gardner, high-school teachers in the county of Norfolk (England), publishes memorable verse dedicated to the tutelary genius of the Romanian literature.

MIHAI I. VLAD

41. Al. Florin Tene was born on 13^th June 1942, in the town of Dragasani-Valcea. He does his elementary and high school in Dragasani (1960). He does a 3-year course at the Pedagogical Institute of Baia Mare, after which he does a 3-year course in accountancy at the Polygraphic Technical School in Bucuresti (1980). He has worked as a journalist, a reporter on the building site of Lotru-Voineasa, as an expert in commodities and then as editor of the magazine FLAGRANT Bucuresti, for the area of Cluj. He publishes poems and various articles.

PETRE PETRIA

42. Al. Florin Tene is known to literature lovers as one of the prestigious writers from Cluj and he is appreciated for his journalistic and literary talent, for his sensibility and for the amiable critical vision of his literary chronicles about the books of some colleagues published in various magazines and newspapers in the country and abroad. MARIN OPREA

43. Al. Florin Tene is the author of several volumes of verse, building a poetic universe, political and erotic in equal measure, in which the themes are “the old parents”, the moments in history and the young spirit, with everything that belongs to it:

enthusiasm, love, actions and heroic gesture.

CONSTANTIN ZARNESCU

44. The poet Al. Florin Tene practises an erotic and discreet lyricism, poetry of the daily routines and of some native myths. The author reveals his true vocation: the power of transfiguration of the fact of life and of inspiring it the necessary

expression. ION OARCASU

45. The poetry of Al. Florin Tene is like a communicative warm song dedicated to man, to the continual round dance of the season, to the native regions. NEGOITA IRIMIE

46. In the volume OCHI DESCHIS, Al. Florin Tene skatters many jewels which get him closer to Bacovia’s atmosphere.

LAURENTIU ULICI

47. The novel CHIPUL DIN GRADINA by Al.Florin Tene, incorporates the reading into its own “mirror”. The author, through an auto referential and subtle game creates a space of reflection: the face is and isn’t identical to the reflected one. Trough this deviated mirroring, he surprises a broad spectre of alienated pressures over the aesthetic and ethic.

DUMITRU VELEA

48. Through its crystal clearness, Al. Florin Tene’s poetry reveals the interest for sources of inspiration, of the most generous nature. It is poetry of the feelings, with the thematic sap in the roots of the native abode. Meditation acquires a real lyrical functionality, due to precisely the elegiac vibration.

IONEL BOTA

49. Tene, Al. Florin (born 13-0601942, Dragasani- Valcea). Writer, journalist. The high school in Dragasani; The Bolographic Technical School in Bucuresti; The Faculty of Philology of the Pedagogic Institute in Baia Mare; editor of the magazine CETATEA CULTURALA and of the weekly CURIERUL PRIMARIEI. Editorial debut: OCHI DESCHIS, verse (1974). He has also published: FUGA STATUILOR, verse (1979); NUCUL DINTRE DOUA VEACURI, verse, Belgium (1993), VITRALIILE MARII, verse, Belgium (1997), CONFESIUNILE UNUI NAVIGATOR PE USCAT, poems, Germany (1998); CHIPUL DIN OGLINDA, novel (1997). Member of the Royal Society of the Romanian and Belgium writers, founder member of the League of European Integration of Romania. Translations in magazines in Belgium, Hungary, USA, England, France, Germany.

MARIN OPREA

50. Melancholic or moving, writing in elegant poems the simple joys of life with the accents of a reflexive gravity, adopting now an ironic accent, now an unexpected taste of the patriarch, Al Florin Tene crosses a good hour of his poetic destiny with his last volume. ION CRISTOFOR

51. In CONFLUENTE (magazine founded in Oravita in 1992) we find some authors also present in ORIENT LATIN. One of them is the same vigorous novelist, Al.Florin Tene, of whom Mircea Popa had written in this magazine from Timisoara.

C. STANESCU

52. (…) Al. Florin Tene, being a complex voice, it is normal for us to also find again, in this volume, poems with a stern and solemn style. This exalts the perennial values of the Romanian culture and history like in the pages dedicated to the tutorial genius of our literature, Mihai Eminescu, or to the Romanian Literature, who unites and lasts over centuries.

Following his evolution, the writer has had a valuable ascent with each one of his books and his latest volumes constitute true revelations. Prof. Dr. MONICA STRATULESCU

53. I congratulate you for coming to the open stage with the play VA SOMEZ, DOMNULE DOCTOR! May all your dreams come true like in fairy tales. MAGDA URSACHE

54. ORBUL DIN MUZEUL SATULUI has two qualities, besides others which I don’t wish to enumerate here: a very good use of the latest prose techniques, which he uses with distinction and with frank critical intensions, and an excellent power of abbreviation of the daily habits and platitudes.

AUREL STAMATE

55. If we follow attentively, the interaction of plans in the stage production of Al.Florin Tene’s play, VA SOMEZ, DOMNULE DOCTOR! we can infer that some original effects regarding the process of communism had great echo in the soul of the public.

NICOLAE BENEA