ENTHRONED SIMPLICITY. VIDIN. RIMBAUD LIVES.

When Sunflowers blossom, not only plain and beautiful plants open to delight the eye. Sunflowers symbolize summer, nothing less than life.
In my window in Leipzig in the past, there was standing two vases, mostly lavishly filled, in full colour sunflowers, behind them the blue contrasting sky, cumulus clouds interspersed, illuminated by morning sunlight.

I think of the legions of people, carried away from this earth because her time was ended, and hope for memories for them as they awaited the end of their last journey on the Styx; memories of overwhelming beauty such as I carry within me …

„A little outside of Vidin, at the west, a hill pushes into the terrain, from where you can see the whole town, less than three kilometres away, with its white-grey stone houses and the Danube flowing around it in a semicircle. A panorama as if drawn by a master’s hand, aimed at man’s most sensitive sources of sensation; an event for the eye, capable of promising to allowing those who have the dying to enjoy the temptations of the paradise to come on their deathbed.

Imagination or not, the sight of this painting, especially at the end of spring, when the blueness of the water rises with increasing force and the flora seems to explode in colour, takes your breath away if you have a romantic touch. And when this breath flows again into a cloudless, happy breast, the fresh-sweet scent of the fully developed spring is on the tongue and palate. Lemon and orange trees growing on the in surrounding farms, lush green meadows, olive groves as you would expect only in Italy, fruit plants of all kinds and tomato fields release their scents, which seem to gather under a haze bell, only to nestle, to merge, as it were, and as a veil of beguiling odeurs roam around the senses of the people, almost penetrate them.

I closed my eyes and it was that spring day again that greeted our arrival in Vidin, in the north-westernmost tip of Bulgaria, bordering on Romania. As if that day in June 1995 had direct access to my inner being, then and now in my memory, as if with a gentle feather, it strokes the spot where the feelings of happiness of the lover seem to converge, just below the sternum, from the inside, of course.

The sun-drenched day was approaching its last third, and the house of Baba Stanka, the temporary destination of our journey and home of Svetlin’s grandmother, built itself up before us as a witness to Spartan barrenness. Simple walls, a thatched roof in great need of renewal, small square windows with flower embroidered curtains, yellowish plaster on the sloping walls, and a scarlet door that needed regular painting. A poor home, it flashed through my mind, and: Where will she put us, Baba Stanka?


We parked the car, a 7-series BMW of the latest design, and this detail should still be significant, got out and walked towards Baba Stanka, who was smiling and waiting for her grandson. She looked Indian, with a wrinkled face, tanned, turquoise eyes, black hair, but with a strong silver tinge, the latter strictly tied back. She was dressed in a peasant’s unadorned throw, and her bent legs were in green rubber boots. I knew from Svetlin that she must be over eighty, which is what she looked like, but with the certainty that she would at least live to be a hundred. Her natural teeth were white, her smile contagious. She embraced Svetlin, whose name means „light“, pinched my cheek as if I were a rascal, called us to enter.

But at first my gaze glided to the left, past her and the house, towards the extensive property surrounded by all kinds of deciduous trees. And again, as if looking down at Vidin from above, it took my breath away. For a piece of half-wild, half-cultivated nature opened up to me, a Garden of Eden, hardly to be surpassed in plant diversity. Apple, pear, cherry and lemon trees I saw there, bearing fruit, meadows, un-mown and full of flowers, and I also saw many different trees and bushes, whose names I didn’t know, and then there were some beds laid out, lushly growing. And further back, corn was growing, and a little further on, a small wheat field began, which reached up to the adjacent forest. There were chickens everywhere, clucking happily. And I saw a couple of cats that didn’t seem to take any notice of us.

In the house Baba Stanka showed us our rooms, simple spaces without electric light, only a small window let the sun shine in and ennoble as shining details of the furniture. There a rural embroidery pattern, there a piece of polished wood, a footstool or the bed, simple but inviting, on the wall a small icon.
„Is there no light here?“ I asked Svetlin.
He laughed, shook his head.
„There’s no electricity here. Nowhere.“
I was stunned. But I also felt a breath of history. If our brand-new BMW was not a stone’s throw away as a sign of modernity on Baba Stanka’s estate, one might have thought we had drifted into the 19th century. I, for one, liked the idea. I saw myself already awake dreaming, in the smart uniform of a cuirassier lieutenant, riding down into some valley, my saber casually to one side.

But back to Baba Stanka.

Later, when the darkness was spreading, we sat down at a fireplace, while a starry sky, which seemed to be within reach, seemed to come closer and closer. It seemed to me surreal, black-blue, speckled with hundreds of stars, the moon magically dense, of exaggerated beauty in this cosmic ensemble.

The food that Baba Stanka prepared for us in a cast-iron pot over an open fire is still today – after decades and countless dinners such as Bocuse in Lyon or Käfer in Munich or Flaming & Co. in Warsaw … unparalleled. She only mixed freshly broken eggs, but monstrously large, then fleshing tomatoes, just picked and washed in a nearby stream, with red and yellow peppers, olive oil, feta cheese and various herbs. She achieved a viscidity of the food that perfectly harmonized with the substance of the still warm, fragrant white wheat bread. The taste, flanked by pleasant spiciness, was unattainable. We drank cold brook water and rakiir with it.
I had to think of the new 7 BMW, the sunshine, dreamed of red, feminine lips for kissing; then a mental leap to Arthur Rimbaud followed, and I knew … pardon Arthur … here God begins.“