Inventor of Love by Gherasim Luca. Translated with an introduction by Julian and Laura Semilian. Introduction by Andrei Codrescu. Essay by Petre Raileanu. A discourse on the re-invention of love but beginning on a somber note of suicide. A work of desire, despair, and reconciliation. A polemical and theoretical text far ahead of its time. One of the most extraordinary texts of any of the Surrealists of that time period (1940's) by one of Romania's most important members of the Bucharest Surrealist group. Includes all of Inventor of Love and a survey of other writings by Luca. First translation into English.

Gherasim Luca (1913-1994) was one of the founders of the Bucharest Surrealist Artists Group. Poet, writer, artist with more than two dozen published books. Exiled after Romania turned communistic he moved to Paris. He committed suicide by jumping into the Seine in Paris in 1994.

‘‘…from one temple to the other, the ebony blood of my virtual suicide drains in virulent silence… the bullets crisscross my brain day and night… dispersing inside the skull an odor of detonated gun powder, of clotted blood, of chaos.”
-- Luca, Inventor of Love

Julian Semilian is a Romanian Poet, Film maker, novelist, and accomplished translator. His writings have appeared in journals and anthologies around the world. Recent translations include: Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu, Paul Celan's Romanian Poems, and many translations within the comprehensive: Born in Utopia, Anthology of Romanian Literature. With his wife Laura Semilian they have translated Max Bleecher's Scarred Hearts, Micea Cartarescu's Levant, and works by Gellu Naum. They both reside in North Carolina.

Click here to read The Exquisite Corpse review of Inventor of Love

See also The Twisted Spoon Press edition of "The Passive Vampire" by Luca