Santa Teresa de Jesús in Romania. Interview with Christian Tămaș, the Translator into Romanian of St.Teresa’s Works

Abstract

Saint Theresa of Ávila lived in Spain, during the complicated XVIth century. A life of obedience, dedicated to writing and to the foundation of Carmelite monasteries. The present interview (a modest homage upon the celebration of 500 years since the birth of the saint) allows us to approach the life and works of a top rank personality of the Occidental religious literature from the perspective of a translator, more precisely from the perspective of the man who transposed her words into Romanian. A specialist in Arabic language and literature, a novelist and translator from Italian, Catalan, French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish and English, Christian Tămaș published, between 1994 and 1998, four of the main works of the Spanish writer, being the first to present her thoughts and ideas to the Romanian reader at that time. A lucid witness of times when openness and intelectual curiosity were highly valued, the translator evokes certain aspects regarding the way in which she has been perceived in Romania, pinpointing the difficulty of the Theresian text and speaking of the role of religious translation, the present state of the act of reading, the lights and shadows of a society —the modern day, Romanian one.