If you want to enjoy nature at the foot of the mountain, but relax without engaging in hikes or any specific sports, we offer you a library featuring the works of writers from the Argeș region and beyond.

Indeed, you can detach yourself from the urban clamor and rejuvenate by reading a book, in the serenity of the forest, accompanied by the soothing murmur of the river near Poiana Mucenicului.

Our recommendation for today is the poetry of Ion Barbu.

Also known as Dan Barbilian, Ion Barbu (born in Câmpulung in 1895), one of the most renowned interwar writers in Romania and a representative of Romanian modernism, was both a writer and a mathematician. Although his 1929 doctoral thesis was related to mathematics, Ion Barbu’s career later shifted towards the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest, where he became a professor of algebra. Despite this, poetry held a special place in his life. About the two, the poet said, “where geometry becomes rigid, poetry offers it a horizon towards knowledge and imagination.”

Being very close to Tudor Vianu, Ion Barbu made his debut in poetry as a result of a bet when, on a trip to Giurgiu, he promised his good friend that he would write a notebook of poems. Two of his most well-known poems are “După melci,” which appeared in 1921 in the magazine “Viața Românească,” and “Riga Crypto și lapona Enigel,” a ballad that the poet himself calls “a returned Morning Star.”

Literary critics argue that the works of Ion Barbu, especially those from the third stage of his writings, the hermetic one, are heavily influenced by mathematics. During this period, he gives a profound meaning to the verses and changes their significance just as terms substitute numbers in mathematics.

In our library, you can find volumes of poetry by the writer Ion Barbu and more, allowing you to delight in verses and enjoy a moment of peace at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains.