Aura Christi

She has published 34 books (poetry, novel, essay, journalism) in Romania and 32 volumes translated abroad. Her poetry has been translated into 21 languages. She is Editor-in-Chief of the EBSCO indexed Contemporanul. Ideea Europeană Journal, which appears under the auspices of the Romanian Academy. She is Director of the Ideea Europeana Publishing House, whose history goes back to 1919. Member of the Romanian Writers' Union. Member of the Union of Writers from Moldova. Member of the Union of Professional Journalists of Romania. Recipient of over 20 awards in Romania and abroad.

The Association of Israeli Writers of the Romanian Language and the Israeli-Romanian Cultural Center named her Person of the Year in 2017, granted her the Opera Omnia Award and the Jewish Gratitude silver medal for the volumes Psalms and Planet Israel.  She is also a recipient of the Award of Excellence for International Contribution to Poetry at China's Miluo River International Poetry and Art Week Awards Gala (2020) and of the Grand Prize for Poetry St. George of the Roads of Spikes International Poetry Festival in Uzdin, Vojvodina, Serbia (2021).

The complexity of Aura Christi's style ranges from playful spirit and simplicity  to unexpected shift of register and to classical balance. The poet has created a major poetic work, which has been described as “a poem of great lyrical force and overflowing imagination” (Adam J. Sorkin – USA), “the perfect use of the most diverse stylistic devices – well thought out and inserted in the perfect slot” creating “a masterpiece of this kind of Poetry”. (Hans Dama – Germany) “Aura Christi kneels at the altar of classical poetry in search of her own self. The goal is to (re)discover and express herself! By disseminating classical poetry, Aura Christi – an ambassador of Romanian culture – promotes Romanian culture and Romanian spirituality in the world! I am glad that a few decades ago she listened to me and, abandoning  tyrannical and noisy models, she took to writing sonnets. To put it in Nietzschean style, she dares to be what she already is. Aura Christi is characterized by a strange originality: to serve with fervour and enormous talent what we call Classical Poetry.” (Nicolae Breban – Romania)

Happiness, conversation with God, love, life-death, treated as a perfect whole, the rediscovery of being as a spiritual entity are major, universal themes that permeate the poetry of Aura Christi, advocating the noblest values. The poet's wish is to return to the fundamental values of Europe, to the simple and profound things that help us find God in ourselves.

As testified by the numerous literary awards she has received in her brilliant career, including the most prestigious, among which, for example – the Award of the Ministry of Culture of Romania (1993), the Romanian Academy Award for Poetry (1996), the Award of the Writers' Union of Moldova, the Author of the Year Award of the Association of Publications and Publishers of Romania (2007), Man of the Year 2017 and the Israel 70 Anniversary Medal and other distinctions; The Excellence Award for the contribution to world poetry, conferred at the Awards Gala of the International Poetry and Art Week by the river Miluo (China); Saint George Grand Prize for Poetry of the Ears of Wheat Roads International Poetry Festival in Uzdin, Vojvodina (Serbia), 2021, Mihai Eminescu Prize for Poetry, Uzdin, Vojvodina (Serbia), 2021; Aura Christi is a remarkable poet, a successful novelist, essayist and editor: she has authored over 60 books published in Romania and abroad. Her poems have been translated into 21 languages. Aura Christi was born in Kishinev (USSR/ Republic of Moldova) on January 12, 1967.

She is the daughter of Semion Potlog, an officer in the elite aviation troops, born on November 14, 1933 in the village of Zgărdești (Telenești). Her father comes from a family of teachers and intellectuals; he was a graduate of the Higher School of Military Aviation in the city of Dvinsk (a biographical detail, used by the poet's father in the steps taken to save his daughter's eyes affected, in the post-adolescent years, by galloping ultramyopia). Following a dramatic accident, Semion was forced to give up his military career, becoming disabled for life at the age of 28. The writer's mother, Liubovi Potlog, born Karaman (May 24, 1945), comes from a wealthy family in Northern Moldova. After the establishment of communist power, the parents' families were expropriated by the communist state authorities. Following the application of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (1939), part of the writer's father's family (Potlog-Jshkov) has remained in present-day Romania, and the other – in the present-day Republic of Moldova.

In 1984 she got her A-Level Certificate from the Gh. Asachi Romanian-French Theoretical High School in Kishinev, and in 1990 her MA degree from the Faculty of Journalism of the State University of the Moldova Republic.

In 1993 she got Romanian citizenship, and settled in Bucharest. Aura Christi has travelled extensively in answer to invitations to recitals and conferences, symposiums, congresses or book fairs in Israel, Greece, the Republic of Moldova, the People's Republic of China, France, Germany, Turkey, the Russian Federation, Bulgaria, Spain, a. o. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Contemporanul Journal, founded in the late nineteenth-century (1881), a journal published under the aegis of the Romanian Academy. Aura Christi is a member of the Writers’ Union of Romania, as well as of the Writers' Union of Moldova. Member of Romania’s Professional Journalists Union. Recipient of over 20 distinctions and awards.

In Christi’s novels and essays, she deals with a number of human destinies under the yoke of foreign occupation, a recurrent leitmotif with her, which she calls at home-in exile. The basic theme of her books is geographic exile and one’s attempt to find a homeland in poetry.

Christi’s volumes of poetry, published in Romania, span over three decades of activity: On the Other Side of the Shadow (1993); Against Me (1995); The Ceremony of Going Blind (1996); The Valley of Kings (1996); Don’t Touch Me (anthology, 1997, 1999); The Last Wall (1999); Northern Elegies (2002); The Book of Temptation (anthology, 2003); The Devouring Eye (anthology, 2004); Austere Gardens (2010); The Sphere of Cold (2011); The Tragic Dreamer (anthology, 2013); God’s Orbit (2016); Psalms (anthology, 2016); and Genius of the Heart, a novel in verse (2017), The Island of Resurrection, a novel in verse (2019), One Hundred and One Poems (selected poems, 2020) etc.

Her books of essays include Bits of Being (1998); The Labyrinth of Exile (2000, 2005); The Other Slope (2005); Wine’s Religion (2007); Three Thousand Signs (2007); Exercises in Destiny (2007); Hungry for Life (2010); Nietzsche and the Great Noon (2011); Dostoevsky – Nietzsche. Eulogy of Suffering (2013); Home – in Exile (2016); and her latest, From the Inferno, with Love (2017), The Eternal Return, essays, autobiographical fiction (2021), Prince Mishkin’s Smile (2024).

Christi’s novels include the four titles in the Night Eagles tetralogy: The Sculptor, vol. I (2001, 2004); The Stranger’s Night, vol. II (2004, 2016); The Big Games, vol. III (2006); The Lambs’ Snow, vol. IV (2007). She also published The House in the Dark (2008) and The Wild Circle (2010).

Aura Christi has been honored with numbers of important literary prizes: The Ministry of Culture Prize for Poetry (1993); The Romanian Academy Prize for Poetry (1996); The Romanian Writers’ Union and The Moldovan Writers’ Union Prizes; the Vinea Publishing House Prize for Poetry (1997); Essays Award of the Writers’ Union of Moldova, 1998; Author of the Year Awarded from The Association of Literary Publications and Publishing Houses of Romania (2007); The “Opera Omnia Prize for Poetry” of the Ronald Gasparic Romanian-Canadian Festival (2009); “Man of the Year 2017” and the “Israel 70” Anniversary Medal and other distinctions; The Excellence Award for the contribution to world poetry, conferred at the Awards Gala of the International Poetry and Art Week by the river Miluo (China), 2020; Grand Prize for Poetry “Saint George" of the “Ears of Wheat Roads” International Poetry Festival in Uzdin, Vojvodina (Serbia), 2021, “Mihai Eminescu" Prize for Poetry, Uzdin, Vojvodina (Serbia), 2021; “Person of the Year” and the “Shalom” Medal, awards granted by the Israeli-Romanian Cultural Center Foundation and the Union of Israeli Writers and People of Culture of Romanian origin, Tel Aviv, 2022, etc.

German:
• Geflüster/ Silence, bilingual anthology, poems, German translation by Christian W. Schenk, Dionysos Verlag, 1994 (Germany);
• Elegien aus der Kälte / The Sphere of Cold, poems, translated into German by Edith Konradt, Pop Verlag, 2008 (Germany);
• Schmucklose Gärten/ Austere Gardens, Gedichte/ Poems, Romanian-German Bilingual Edition, translated into German by Hans Dama, Pop Verlag, 2018 (Germany);
• Schmucklose Gärten/ Austere Gardens, Gedichte/ Poems, German Edition, translated into German by Hans Dama, Pop Verlag, 2018 (Germany);
• Rosarien: Rumänische Gegenwartslyrik – poems, anthology including 56 Romanian poets, selection, preface and translation into German by Christian W. Schenk, Dionysos Publishing House, 2020 (Germany)
• Der blaue Salon • Gedichte / Salonul albastru • Poems, anthology and translation by Christian W. Schenk, Dionysos Publishing House, 2020 (Germany)

French:
• Anthology of eight Romanian poets translated by Alain Paruit and Odile Serre, L'Esprit des Péninsules, Paris, 1996;
• Sfera frigului · Sphėre du froid, poems, French and Romanian editions, translation by Claudiu Soare, Junimea Publishing House, 2016
• Exercices d'obscurité/ Exercises of Darkness, poems, French and Romanian editions, translated into French by Sorin Barbul, Vinea Publishing House, 2018 (Romania - France);
• Les anges se faisaient automne/ Îngerii s-au făcut toamna, selected poems, translation from the French by Claudiu Soare, Editions Harmattan, 2024 (France)

English:
• Crini Imperiali/Imperial Lilies, poems, Romanian-English bilingual edition, translation by Antuza Genescu, Augusta Publishing House, Timișoara, 1999;
• Lăsați fluturii să zboare/Let Butterflies Go, Romanian-English bilingual edition, translation by Olimpia Iacob și Jim Kacian (jointly with Peter Thabit Jones), Timpul Publishing House, Iași, 2014;
• Cineva din noapte/ Someone in the Night, poems, Romanian-English bilingual edition, translation by Cristina Tătaru, Tribuna Publishing House, Cluj, 2014
• The God’s Orbit • English translation by Adam Sorkin and Petru Iamandi, Mica Press Publishing House, 2020 (UK);

Spanish:
• Jardines austeros/ Austere Gardens, poems, Romanian-Spanish bilingual edition, translation into Spanish by Dana Oprica, Éride Ediciones, Madrid, 2019 (Spain)
• God’s Orbit ▪ Romanian-Spanish bilingual edition, translation into Spanish by Dana Oprica, Éride Ediciones, Madrid, 2019 (Spain)
• Angelica Lambru, Mujer en la aduana – 10 poetas rumanas contemporáneas/ Femeia la vamă – 10 poeți români contemporani, edition, selection, notes and translation by Angelica Lambru. Poems by Ana Blandiana, Nina Cassian, Ruxandra Cesereanu, Aura Christi, Mariana Codruț, Mariana Marin, Ileana Mălăncioiu, Anca Mizumschi, Irina Nechit, Ioana Nicolaie, Huerga y Fierro Publishing House, 2022 (Spain)
• Salonul albastru/ El salón azul, antologie, Romanian-Spanish bilingual edition, translation into Spanish by Corina Oproae, Visor Publishing House, 2023 (Spain)

Italian:
• The Sphere of Cold/ From Hell, with Love / La sfera del freddo ▪ Dall'inferno con amore, poems, autobiographical prose, essays, Italian translation by Maria Floarea Pop, Rediviva Publishing House, Milan, 2015 (Italy);
• Nordiche Elegie/ Northern Elegies, Poems, Romanian-Italian Bilingual Edition, Italian translation by Geo Vasile, Aracne Publishing House, Rome, 2017 (Italy);
• God’s Orbit/ Orbita del Dio, Romanian-Italian Bilingual Edition, Italian translation by Ştefan Damian and Francesco Corsi, Aracne Publishing House, Rome, 2018 (Italy)
• God’s Orbit/ Il genio del cuore · Geniul inimii, novel in verse, Italian translation by Maria Floarea Pop, Rediviva Publishing House, Milan, preface by Francesco Corsi, 2019 (Italy)
• Grădini austere/ Giardini austeri, translation into Italian by Cinzia Demi, postface by Alessandro Pertosa, Editura Puntoacapo, 2024 (Italy)

Albanian:
• Arkitektura e natës / Architecture of the Night, poems, anthology, translated into Albanian by Kopi Kyçyku, 2008

Greek:
• God's Orbit, poems, Romanian-Greek bilingual edition, Greek translation by Victor Ivanovici, Gavrielides Publishing House, Athens, 2017 (Greece)

Hebrew:
• The Genius of the Heart. The Book of My Enlightenment, a novel in verse, translation into Hebrew by Ada Shaulov Enghelberg, Familia Publishing House, 2020, Tel Aviv (Israel)
• The God’s Orbit, Hebrew translation by Menahem Falek, Emda Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 2020 (Israel)
• Grădini austere, poems, translation into Hebrew by Menachem Falek, Emda Publishing House, 2022 (Israel)

Chinese:
• Genius of the Heart. My Illumination Book, Chinese translation by Ding Chao, prefaced by Jidi Majia (Instead of Preface - Aura Christi), Shandong Education Press (2019), Shandong Education Press, 2019 (People's Republic of China)
• God’s Orbit, bilingual edition, Romanian-Chinese, translation into Chinese by Chen Xiaoying, preface by Gao Xing, Encyclopedic Publishing House, Beijing, 2019 (People's Republic of China)
• The Blue Solemnity (in collaboration with Maxim Amelin and Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda), anthology translated from Russian, Polish and, respectively, Romanian into Chinese and edited on the occasion of the International Poetry and Art Week by the Miluo River in China. Aura Christi’s poems were translated from Romanian into Chinese by the poet and translator Gao Xing. The anthology includes a selection from the poetic work of the three winners from Russia, Poland and Romania, who were awarded three prizes of excellence for international contribution in the field of poetry at the Awards Gala International Poetry and Art Week Miluo River foreign poets, a ceremony held on 12 December 2020 (People's Republic of China)
• Time Comes from a Shell. Poems, translation into Chinese by Ding Chao, Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, 2023 (People’s Republic of China)

Bulgarian:
• Cercul sălbatic, a novel, translation into Bulgarian by Darina Felonova, Perseus Press Publishing House, 2021 (Bulgaria)

Serbian:
• Neplodni vrtovi · Grădini austere, poems, translation into Serbian by Vasile Barbu, Comuna Literară Vârșeț (KOV) Publishing House, 2021 (Serbia).

Hungarian:
• Grădini austere, poems, translation into Hunagrian by Balazs F. Attila, AB ART Publishing House, 2022 (Hungary)
• A költészet tavasza · Primăvara poeziei · Spring of poetry, an anthology. Edited by / Editat de / Összeállította: Balázs F. Attila, poems in Romanian, Hungarian and English. Translated by / Traduceri de / Fordították: Corina Știrb Cooper, Balázs F. Attila, Halmosi Sándor, Gyermán-Tóth Márta, Pethő Lorand, Murányi Zita, Balázs Boróka, Sohár Pál, Șerban Foarță, Irina Dubsky, Zalán Tibor, Tünde Kovács, Csergő Domokos, AB ART, 2024 Publisher (Hungary)
• Orbita zeului/ Isten Pályája, translation into Magyar by Pethő Lorand (Austria), AB ART Publishing, 2024 (Hungary)

Swedish:
• Vid tystnadens board / At the Table of Silence, poems, anthology including Romanian authors in the translation of Ion Milos, Brutus Östlings Bokförlag, Symposion Stockholm, Stehag, 1998

• Aura Christi’s poetry was formed and shaped firmly, with rare boldness and gravity of tone, especially around post-romantic meditative poetry, from Rilke to Tsvetaeva and from Blaga to Nichita Stănescu. Never falling prey to the post-December 1989 cultural and worldly temptations, our poet stunned critics through ample, warm, bold metaphorical volutes. In several volumes, she has addressed, with splendid rebelliousness, the classical poetic sonnet and has demonstrated an excellent command of the language and the specific means, in a lyrical poetry of serious, deep meditation, expressed in metaphors, in which the modernity and sensitivity of the century merge – with clear-cut, highly original vigour, tumultuously and almost musically, in subtle euphonic resonance through references, accents and symbolic images – with the great torrent of high European poetry, from Rimbaud and Baudelaire to Rilke and Blaga, from Tsvetaeva and Nichita Stănescu.

Ample narrative constructions, the novels of Aura Christi address, with rare courage and maturity, the model and the expressive and conceptual scope of the reflexive novel, on serious, human themes, such as written by M. Proust and Th. Mann, under the impressive, infinite and tremendously expressive tutelage of F. M. Dostoevsky.

Signs and messages, as living, highly expressive symbols, which can be affirmed only by the letter and spirit of a “people of troubadours”, of eternal alumni of the Thracian Orpheus, who once lived, as it were, in the same realm where today the young, exuberant, masterful and vigorous, candid Aura Christi is moving and singing unmistakably – as a pure “Vestal”, dedicated entirely to the temple of poetry from anywhere and from any time.” (Nicolae Breban, Member of the Romanian Academy)

• Aura Christi resembles modernists, reputed for changing places, in one more respect. Their lack in geo-historical identity is compensated by an excess of cultural affiliations. In his Autobiography, W.B. Yeats mentions a universal church of myths and traditions. Cosmopolitan culture and hybrid references are defining for Aura Christi’s works too. Her sources include  Novalis, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Ernst Bertram,  Nikolai Berdyaev, Aleksand Blok, Mikhail Bakhtin, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tvetaeva, Dmitri Merejskovsky. Her perfect knowledge of French and Russian has opened her the door to some of Europe’s master minds. They are not referred for the sake of erudite display but as filters for her own reflections on the dramatic history shared by Middle and East Europe in the last century.

She has found the language in which to cast experiences that seemed to lie beyond one’s capacity of discursive articulation: the lapse of humanity to the point where someone kills with his conscientious approval in the name of an idea, the gradual process whereby the man within man is replaced by a monster. It is not the statistics of crime – impressive as it is – that interests Aura Christi. She pours Nietzsche into Dostoevsky in order to make the anatomy of absolute Evil. The evil in the human heart. The titles of her books are telling in respect to their moral geography. Their paysage moralisé is The House in the Dark, The Sphere of the Cold, The Savage Circle. In the West, it was philosopher Nietzsche whose seminal ideas in the deconstruction of logocentrism were allowed to shape postmodernist epistemology. In Romania, it was the Nietzsche of demystified ethics that shaped two master minds of contemporary literature. Novelist Nicolae Breban chose the male Nietzsche of master souls and of the will to power. Aura Christi was attracted to the Nietzsche of aporia, the Nietzsche who, in Ecce Homo placed humanity under the double effigy of Christ and Dionysius. In Aura Christi’s words: “kindness ending in claws”.... She is a novelist of the lapserian East in a portrait gallery that includes Ismail Kundera, Bashkin Shehu, or the Strugatski Brothers, because in all of them a nightmarish reality is cast into bits of humanity’s broken souls. The literary geography overlaps a geo-political area which Univ. Prof. Dr. Marian Victor Buciu sums up in an enlightening paragraph: « I see in Aura Christi a representive of this integrated, transnational age, the fruit of a tree whose roots are in Bassarabia (formerly part of the Soviet Union, now the Republic of Moldova) and whose branches reach to Romania, a country which has been a member of the European Community since 2007. Her complex writing bears testimony to a dramatic personal and collective destiny. Aura Christi’s works bespeak a strong personality, of an aesthetic relevance that has got her into the present canon of Romanian literature »”.

The canon of Romanian culture, including modern writers of universal appeal, such as Constantin Brancusi, Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionesco, Tristan Tzara, or Paul Celan, is the outgrowth of a time-honoured tradition which goes back in time to the early seventeenth century when King Carl XII of Sweden took refuge to Tighina (present-day Republic of Moldova) and connected with Romanian princes and scholars, such as Dimitrie Cantemir, a member of the Berlin Academy to which he was introduced by G. Leibniz, Nicolae  Mavrocordat, Constantin Brancoveanu and Stefan Cantacuzino. Alba Iulia, the seat of the 1626 French-Swedish-Transylvanian Treaty, was the place where Romanians, previously separated in three principalities, united to form the Romanian nation-state in 1918, an independent people with a substantial contribution to Europe’s culture and identitarian construction.

By the range of her works and the breadth of her narrative fresco, Aura Christi would be a deserving addition. „At present, writes the poet Aura Christi, Romania is the seventh European state. The phenomenon of the migration of its citizens (over seven million) is not alien to it as it is not not in the other states in Eastern Europe. As for me, I have found support in faith and poetry all my life, in the need to love and be loved, and I still see Poetry as a prayer, as a school for rehumanizing. Even if, or even more so, since I lived for many years (half of my life) within the confines of a system which cultivated ethnocide as state policy, meaning lack of freedom, censorship, etc., I believe that faith, dignity and Poetry (which are of divine origin) have saved me. The world’s most beautiful books, my own books helped me find a harbor, a homeland, where to write and treasure that multiple identity on which I wrote a few heartfelt pages, to extol love, friendship, divinity and what Marina Tsvetaieva called „the law of the outstretched hand and the open soul”. (prof. dr. Maria-Ana Tupan, România)

• Aura Christi's poetry explores the underground inside in an atmosphere full of mystery, emotion and words, like “painting lightning at dusk”. For Christi, “the heart knows everything”, and the “magic” of the poet, “in the light, slow”, takes you “on her big, brimming wing” to the place where you “keep an eye on God”. A poem of great lyrical force and overwhelming imagination. (Prof. Dr. Adam J. Sorkin, USA)

• „Being unique means having personality, vitality, novelty, creativity and imagination. The uniqueness is the support of a poet's existence. On entering the world of Aura Christi's poetry, we are ushered into a luminous path, we are charmed, we are moved by a special breath. This is the uniqueness of Aura Christi’s poetry: content, depth, wealth, mystery, a strong sense of tragedy and holiness, a religious sense and the consciousness of suffering, and all this is an emotional inner light. (…) Bathed in atmosphere of modernity and freedom, Aura Christi’s poems have at the same time the charm of classical poetry. In the vein of a very introverted lyricism and in pious contemplation, the poet explores the themes of survival, suffering, destiny, freedom, exile, life and death, darkness and light. These are timeless themes, universal themes, themes that encompass the whole world, humanity as a whole. In this sense, we can very well say that Aura Christi is not only a Romanian poet, but also a universal poet.” (Gao Xing, People's Republic of China)

• „Two things impress one who visits the biography biography of Aura Christi (pen name of Aurelia Potlog) (...): A multidimensional, complex, high-amplitude, erudite, innovative and sustainable literary work and at the same time, a writer in the full sense of the word. Poetry books for a poet's career, over a dozen volumes - including a novel in verses! Novels proper, including a tetralogy, for a career as a novelist! Essay Books – and not just collections of articles, but also monographic, academic studies I would call them. Interview books/ dialogues, translations, publications, electronic books, editorial activity. Few writers can be considered as accomplished in so many directions. A totalising myth of the fully accomplished writer, and that only along five decades of life! Also remarkable is the visibility and eception of her literary works in the community of disocuirse, in the country and in the world. In common terms of the Academy Hall, one can say the impact of her writings can compete with the specific impact on sciences rather than on human beings. Her poems have been translated into over fifteen countries, and in more than ten countries. She has gone on tours, recitals of poetry, participating in festivals, symposiums, congresses, bookfairs.“ (Gheorghe Păun, Member of the Romanian Academy)

• „We are dealing with a creative personality in the field of poetry, essay, fiction and translations. We are dealing with a well-known personality in the Romanian literary and intellectual world, as well as throughout the world. In terms of poetry, we can speak of true masterpieces of great originality, subjective novels in verse, for example, works translated into German, Greek, Swedish, French, English, Italian, Albanian, Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Hungarian etc. The number of poetry volumes amounts to about 9 (not counting anthologies and books in digital version). Aura Christi composes magnificent poems combining the lyrical, erotic, nostalgic and religious modes. If we pick up the essay, we can find polemic essays, studies in Romanian literature, as well as academic studies that go deep into Nietzsche's philosophy or Dostoevsky's fiction, in insidious forms of remarkable originality. As far as fiction is concerned, we can mention a tetralogy plus two other novels; some of which have been published in several editions. The novels are complex, psychological and socio-historical, with actions placed in areas on both sides of the Prut River separating Romania and Moldova.”. In addition, Aura Christi has signed many translations and has edited literary-cultural journals, of great prestige, such as Contemporanul, whose Editor-in-Chief she has been for many years. She has held readings and conferences in over two dozen countries. Between 1991 and 2018 she received 18 awards (in Romania and abroad). (...)” (Prof. Dr. Virgil Nemoianu, University of California, San Diego, Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy)

• „Within the Romanian cultural context, Aura Christi has asserted herself as a powerful distinct literary voice, with a dominantly lyrical expressivity – in all her types of discourse – which, fortunately, places her in an area of literary perennity, provided by her themes and style which are linked to the fundamentals of man’s creativity and her constant considerations on them. The intimate structure and creative personality of this poet have forged themselves on the buttresses of an equally classic and modern spirituality, as well as the complex dimension of exile. That is why, for instance, Aura Christi’s collections of essays are called Fragments of Being, Craving for Being, Home in Exile, From Hell with Love, and The Forever Return. The Rilke model, in Duines Elegies in particular, functions as a fundamental landmark in the self-knowledge process the poet goes through – one collection of poems is called Northern Elegies. Then come The Tragic Dreamer, The God’s Orbit, Psalms, or The Genius of Heart, a novel in verse.

Under the sign of classicism seen as aspiration to the harmonious balance of lines, including the option for fixed-form poems and the explicit use of rhetoric in building the poetic significance, Aura Christi writes poetry of great depth in which fundamental themes of artistic creativity such as fate, life and death, poetry and freedom, exile and survival, man and divinity, correlate with a (post) expressionistic poetic discourse, vitalist and frenzy, or, on the contrary, expressing desolation and existential slough. Both lyrical approaches are complementary facets of poetry assumed and, more than that, lived as a sui generis existential act. Being poetic means, to Aura Christi, as to any great poet of humanity – in the way of a deep filiation that links her to the great reflexive spirits looking for the hidden meanings of things (Novalis, Rilke, Blaga, Rimbaud, Tsvetaeva…), to explore the signs of the real looking for the hidden order (presumed to be harmonically poetic) of things for whose revelation one needs to experience suffering as purification. That is why, unlike the current de-lyricalization of poetic discourse and its extreme secularization, Aura Christi re-initiates an emotional dialogue with divinity, re-writes the sacred history of the Christic sacrifice, and, above all, re-settles the world along its mythical coordinates.” (Dr. Eugenia–Simona Antofi, Faculty of Letters, Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, George Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory, Romanian Academy).