Suceava[i], December 3, at 23,1987:
«Dear sir Noica Constantin, over Bukovina a sleepy white bedding, there are three cigarettes and one hour until tomorrow. I lit holy candles ago and I think with friendship to Eminescu. He was my age when gave the best poems.
Just thought I dreamed me someday that a king of thought makes me not forget that exist. I feel abandoned in the last station where a bus can not come. Metaphysical snowy mountains surrounding me in the sound isolation: the prison of my name.
“Chelba” comes probably from scabby − bald, missing, absent anything.
Me thought that I never had the power to say with pride that sire Nothing, as Ulysses says gigantic that it is Nobody, and I scare that if say, I could be taken seriously.
You know, had a wrong idea about the practical training when You said a suitcase with books is enough and that a split is a bad division good. I realize that the bad distribution mean that you assumed away from the world, free time, a minimum of comfort and peace, but not hunger, cold, and local garbage.
I write concern. School director wants to make me take an inventory of about 90,000 lei, which already lacks some things (and I will end up long, I assume that will fail and others). I think it is a maneuver designed to fix me and prevent me to go after practical training. If insistence school director will be incalculable and will appear pressure from the Inspectorate, I am determined to give my resignation. Thus, ending up with education (which in current conditions, means just wear), I will still only take a Păltiniş path.
My Nastratin Hogea face in the market now with Zarathustra, not forgetting that in five years ago his friend the poet was insane.
He sat good, for a hunter of lions, to say: man may be crushed, but can not be defeated, but I, who am a hunter of ideas, say, man can not be defeated, but can be crushed.
Poor people were left with only souls, bruised and shake, it was worse and more bitter, certainly can not write, nor to recite killings and sufferings caused by the Tartars − said Ion Neculce, in Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei (Moldavia Cronicle).»
*
This is the letter that I started to write to Constantin Noica the evening of 3 to 4 December 1987. I left it as the draft, irresolute. Why should it worry Noica, I thought so, with my problems? I never knew, in that sad winter evening, that my imaginary interlocutor, with whom I once walked around Paltinis, just leave me behind and heroically climbing on the road without turning, to non-imaginary world.
The next day, the shuttle bus Balcauti[ii]-Suceava-Siret and back, had to know that Constantin Noica man was no longer among us. Everybody was talking about. To be announced Free Europe. Obviously, no-I never sent that letter. If not already read.
*
Noica became long time ago our imaginary interlocutor, of our questions and our intellectual obsessions. Noica Constantine’s death deprived me of my first and last big interlocutor. His disappearance made me feel betrayed once again by my averse destiny. I had plans to Păltiniş. I wanted to get meteorologist there after graduation, and that patriarchal silence, I finally dedicate philosophical research. Was the only thing I wanted from life. Noica Constantine’s death meant to me primarily postpone this project in an undefined future, not today nor yet come.
The mere presence of Constantin Noica to Păltiniş was for me, as for many others, a fulcrum in a society with no horizon, even hostile to philosophy.
Immediately, after the holiday season, in January 1988, in the “Serile sucevene”, the proposal of Mr Alexander Ţenchea, professor of German at the Institute of sub-engineer in Suceava, I held a conference entitled “Constantin Noica − School of Păltiniş” where I made a tribute, with a huge thrill, to the last great Romanian thinker, by a periplus by his philosophical work and my memories. I recently finished reading all his books before 1944, fewer Pagini despre sufletul românesc (Pages about Romanian soul), the last one, from the cycle before the Second World War. All these books were, I think, to Index. I do not found anywhere in the library. I have found them at the National Museum of Bukovina in Suceava, in the library of Peter Comarnescu, donated there. All books were his dedication Noica. I have read voluptuously, with the feeling of a great discovery.
It is known that Noica, under communist dictatorship, has not been published until 1962. Moreover, when it was published “Phenomenology of spirit … retell by Constantine Noica”, he still had two years of detention. Even after his release, in 1964, Noica came only after five years, in 1969, with two volumes: “Twenty seven steps of the real” and “Plato: Lysis (with an essay about the meaning of the Greek love of people and things)”.
To what extent we do, from “Lysis” here, with a re-educate Noica, political recycled, they leave the historians of philosophy to decide. But it is important to notice that this man with a huge creative potential, whose biography was broken at the age of 35 years through a progressive isolation from public life for 20 years, and undergo a long process of ideological distortion, returned to the world what you think: with Lysis and Greek meaning of love of people and things!
In a paid to others who sit in quiet sleep, waiting for the mailman to ring another pension Noica began the second creative philosophical period, the best, though decided to take back the destiny and history through a climbing as high in the spirit world. Noica Constantine is a man who, in spite of fate, has awarded in the end two decades of culture, which he dedicated to philosophical thought and dignity of Romanian culture − that it will not charge anyone!
So, once reached “Mathesis sau bucuriile simple” (Mathesis or simple joy, 1934), his debut, gestures and all other ideas of Constantin Noica they become comprehensible and coherent, had a wire guide, that my conference from Suceava immediately and naturally crystallized around the idea that School from Păltiniş not taught any doctrine (imuabile and definitive truths), but rather, a model of free thinking, genuine, open-minded. In short, the only doctrine was no doctrine. And I concluded the conference as follows: Constantin Noica not died. But if you will go and search Noica and you will tell me that you have not found him, I will answer that you’ve got exactly the time that he was, with measured step, daily tours around Păltiniş.
If you have looked at the right time, you’ve found.
*
The major project of philosopher Constantin Noica was to found a school of true wisdom, who refuse all forms of sectarian and ideological stiffening, in which to teach the art of thinking, to debate and to disavow, in a creative manner, all what it seems indisputable or concluded, a school to teach critical thinking, authentic state of restlessness and continuous spiritual search.
The world had “sick” with a creative restlessness, Noica says, no “curing” through illusory truths, in which shade to sleep. In this project revolves around all of his other projects: eminescian project, the language, the metaphysical and, ultimately, national project.
*
In the postcard (27 November 1984) which responded to my first letters and said that I can visit him any time at Păltiniş, Constantin Noica urge me not to leave physics[iii], to take seriously, no matter what is done in college, because “Only a specialist can have secure access to higher culture.”
The style of modern culture, in Noica’s view, was a openness to philosophy on the basis of an application or a particular science, however, a well-founded experience. Long obsessed me this award. In what I could become a specialist in the 80s, in Romania? In anything! Lost without a trace in a generation condemned of history to extinction in Nothingness, I was left only to become an expert in Nothing (to capital).
Noica, I realized later, was worn with a cultural complex, as his whole generation. No Noica was not, properly speaking, a specialist in anything. Noica regret not knowing more mathematics (although he was an apologist of geometry), regret that it can not keep up in the logico-mathematical jungle, but at the last moment, he tried to overcome his disability with a Logic of a much higher generality: Logic of Hermes (1986). No Eminescu was not a specialist in anything. I have not found, after all, no philosopher, specialist in something. The only possible specialty is the art to find a question when you think it have been given all possible answers. The only possible specialty is the art to live up above the illusion of certainty of any speciality. The only possible specialty is who known to profit by undermining its own authority. Only one philosopher was able to approach this critical state of grace and divine lucidity: Socrates, who said of himself that the only thing he knows is that he does not know anything. That is why Socrates had to be removed from the city, because his critical authority (power of judgement) undermined the authority of all other “specialists”.
Everybody had the impression that Noica wants to specialize in the “Romanian sense of being”, which he attracted many ironies, but the National Language Project of Noica was not only the angle of attack on the fundamental issues in philosophy from the perspective of our experience of identity, perspective in which language was, indeed, the most natural extension.
It was, ultimately, a perspective that, with Heidegger, it proved successful. You can have access to Metaphysics without the natural language, you can not approach the Being without maternal language, in a borrowed or predefined (artificial) language. Language is wisdom store, shelter of Being, and we are not only the accident in which she expressed. Only in the words of your language, said Noica, it can happen to remember things which you never learned.
Instead of emigrating to the West, Constantine Noica proposed himself to remain in the country, with any risk, and try to raise the Romanian language to the rank of philosophical language, along with Greek and German, in order to legitimize himself and Romanian culture the power to speak about Being, profession, as they reveal, implicitly authorize a whole metaphysical approach. Here they came to help Eminescu.
In other words, the philosopher Constantin Noica tried to strengthen the foundation of his metaphysical edifice on two other basis: the national-linguistic and cultural-eminescian projects. Noica found in Eminescu a homologous of Goethe, in Romanian culture, i.e. the expression of a human fullness with attributes even higher.
Literary work of Eminescu, in Noica’s vision, rises beyond the merely social or psychological testimony, as refined and intelligent, at some boundless metaphysical altitudes, and his earthly destiny, that failure by the final collapse was tragic, it is the more original and more human.
Noica nationalist? I never read until today that incriminating (and incriminated) articles of youth. Not interested. Maybe someday I will read. Noica himself has rejected the biography of that period. He paid enough for her. He even proclaimed that any entry into history is a mistake, any policy employment, that, in his twilight of life, he could say about himself, no regrets, even with some pride, that has lived a life without biography, without events, outside history.
But the biography of Constantin Noica was a great and perpetual event in the spirit world, in the history of philosophycal ideas and concepts. Noica was not obsessed with his own person, in the context of history, but how is possible something new in the history of spirit. Trying to find “penny” brought Noica in history of philosophy, you put at the foundation and to build on.
For too long Romanians are distinguished from other nations through sympathy towards a foreign power or culture. It would be appropriate that the Romanians to exceed complexes and to distinguish, finally, through the devotion and sympathy towards the Romanian culture.
Outdated or not, this was, ultimately, the national message (not nationalist) of philosopher Noica.
*
My first visit to Păltiniş was in December 1984.
Philosopher still lived in the guesthouse, in the center of Păltiniş, that the board floor. On the second floor was a long hallway and some five or six rooms, for both sides. One of them to be of Noica. There was much fuss. A lot of tourists plod with ski boots on the stairs and wooden floors on the first floor. All cabin move and creak the joints. Even before my, at the end of stairs, opened a door and within them were some people coming along who had in arms papers, books, manuscripts. There was. He knew that I must arrive. He expected me. A certain student at the Faculty of Physics, in the second-second year of study, who wanted to leave physics and try to join the Faculty of Philosophy.
(I break the previous year of study, in the spring, to devote my attention to a study of Hegel. Made a detour already profitable, according to Hegel’s suggestion, the parents of the saints of Christianity, the dogmatic and patristic texts, dictionaries and encyclopedias, to enlighten me on the logical relationship of the trinity dogma. Fascinate me overjoyed to see how can be different and yet the same the three divine person (hypostases). Soon understood that Hegel did not loose a wink of that trinitarian logic, concentrated in Holy Trinity Dogma, but that he goes with his syllogistic (in his phenomenology and logic) at some extraordinary depth. I was excited, as today in fact, of the sublime shindy entered (to Hegel) the nature, man and supreme being, animated by a single requirement: absolute freedom of spirit. Do not talk to anyone about these things nor do I proposed to write something about them systematically. In Timisoara, there is no faculty of philosophy and not know any philosopher. I had only some scraps of books that do not grab them and never finish, which failed to keep them for too long, in the chaos of campus life.)
So I woke up suddenly face to face with Noica, only genuine philosopher, acknowledged that time in our student media, and the only man in Romania who heard that it is happy to receive and talk to the philosophy passionate young. Not wanted from him than to know if my thoughts are (or not) on track. I wanted to find a wise companion in the flesh, not just in books, passionate about the same questions, to which I gladly share my findings and he will correct me if am wrong, and enjoy with me. Then I found it..
Starting an exploratory discussion, in which Noica wanted to know me, to see what paths I got in philosophy and in which direction I head, discussion often interrupted by other guests, but repeated each time with more warmth and familiarity. Had only an hour and though we knew long ago. Brought even some glasses of plum brandy, of the other guests, who were in Cluj, when suddenly Noica said: I think you bring something with you. For a moment I was flashed by the thought that I came to Noica empty-handed. Yes, I replied, I have a notebook with some reading notes on Hegel. How, Noica replied, have you the courage to come to me with some reading notes on Hegel? Yes, I answered it with serenity, becouse I came not to brave, not to impress Noica in terms of Hegel, I came to a “specialist in Hegel” with just a desire to calibrate my approach from the outset, before I start writing some more extensive and decisive texts. (My license in Physics, completed in 1986, would be an epistemological study of modern physics, the method of knowledge in quantum mechanics, in particular, from the perspective of hegelian logic.) Okay, then Noica said, do you mind if they come and talk to my other guests? No. We will dissect you straight, you know, he has added. Agreed. Noica then went into the next room and get asked the two other of its guests. No more than I remember that one of them was the Arab medical student in Cluj, who wrote poetry in Romanian − I seen him once on television.
I started to read. Noica sit on the bed in a wound as a basileus at the banquet, he lit a pipe with English tobacco (gift, of course) and listen to me with some distance. But soon I began to feel that it puff more vigorous that quiver, and I expected from a second in another to interrupt me. My God, I said in my inwards, Noica lose patience? And I continued to read with more power and passion. Finally, I finished reading that in a race that fragments which I consider essential pieces, that I thought I managed to catch some of the fundamental hegelian ideas. The last of the fragments was about it, called me later hegelian kernel:
“There are a number of ideas that Hegel does not tell us, ideas that, rather, they felt in the subtext of hegelian logic system, ideas without which the whole hegelian edifice falls. The first idea of Hegel is that Being is selfreferential. Being finds himself and says himself that, well, it deleted itself. The idea that comes immediately following position is that, through the concept, consciousness identify with Being, skip this bridge of concept (by analogy) in the condition of Being, that under which the individual is a universal. With this, and is now affirmed the synthesis idea of the first two ideas, the moments of thinking fall in phenomenon as moments of becoming. Any knowledge is thinking of themselves, taken as the other.”
Followed a moment of silence. The other guests were silent. The first words of Noica were: I would not have ever thought that a young man of your age can understand Hegel.
Finally, I was admitted to the school’s Noica..
What followed was a long discussion about Hegel, the Noica showed me that I still give a certain connotation to consciousness that there is no in Hegel, he then suggested readings, he recommended to start a tourist reading, acquisition of a philosophical horizon as broad is possible, after which they may return and deepen any topic, advised me to go in philosophy on the great boulevards, to the great authors, sources, not on the side paths, but not so, at random, but guided by an idea. Any idea, he asked me. I, I answered it: absolute solitude − the state’s own Being and absolute condition of its absolute freedom. Whoa, Noica exclaimed, with obvious satisfaction, but here are several ideas. Very good, he continued, keep up by the physical and grab yourself serious of philosophy. He recommended to make cleaning between friends, not to keep only those from which I learn, whose friendship I can improve in terms of culture, and to get out of those who only consume my time, explaining my that for the same reason he retired to Păltiniş, to escape the bustle of Bucharest and all sorts of uninvited guests, the distance from Bucharest to Păltiniş acting in a good while, until the emergence of “Diary from Păltiniş” (of Gabriel Liiceanu) as a filter which brought him to visit than those who were truly approach and strong motivated intellectual and spiritual. Finally, he passed my name and my address in a pocketbook. You go on the list of 22 − he said − you know what that means. I knew − just reading the Diary from Păltiniş − and felt like the stakes of this meeting became dizzy.
In parting, Noica told me that I can visit him anytime, but do not too often. After all this excitement, I suddenly felt frustrated. Why? I do not understand why Noica imposed me that restriction only much later. It was December 1984. Three years later, Constantin Noica have to go into nothingness. School of Păltiniş actually completed their work and I was not only a last arrived just before the “last recreation”.
*
Constantin Noica predicted his death as, say, only the great initiate may provide.
I visited Noica than twice a year, once in the summer holidays and once in the winter holidays, before Christmas.
In the winter of’85 Noica told me a story full of significance, a discussion that had recently with uncle Pata, a native of nearly the same age with him slightly younger, which provide (in Păltiniş) some services with hands and with his mountain wagon, and it supplies Noica in winter with wood. In a day uncle Pata he would be told: What are you doing there, Mr. Noica, not the finish, so stay away from family, and still suffer for a single. Well, it would be answered the philosopher, as you, I have my work. Work, work, and then be replicated uncle Pata, but everything has an end. Then, Noica said, for the first time he realized that would be appropriate to think of an end − to a conclusion of his philosophical work. The following year appeared Scrisori despre logica lui Hermes (Letters about the logic of Hermes) − a book thin, transparent and enigmatic, a fulguration of philosophical thinking in a hurry trying to overtake the essence of essences, a sort of substrate conditions prior to any logic, a kind of prototype that reflects the world and features the same in any part of that throughout. After this last book, as is known, Noica was invested with all powers until the last breath in photocopying Eminescu’s manuscripts and putting them into circulation, especially to the young, whereas there was an contagious intellectual fervor and a salutary spiritual freedom. When it was proposed to take to translate the work into German, Noica refused and recommended Blaga, whereas Blaga, said Noica, is who to say something now West, the West needs now Blaga, not Noica, my time will come later. Similarly, in the front of the end, Noica not found it necessary only to fight with the last power to bring to light Eminescu’s manuscripts. Could find a final more apoteotic? Maybe, in parallel, he also worked to De dignitate Europae[iv] – a true anthem dedicated european culture and its universal vocation, despite its ominous decline, but also our marginality. („E pour si muove!”’s Galilei, Noica to be translated into a “Yet Europe” − said, too, with a last gasp, with only two years before the collapse of communist Inquisition.)
In December 1986, before the holidays, I visited again on Noica at Păltiniş. Do not see him any change. It seemed that he entered into some kind of mechanical life of its diurnal, which makes me believe that it will live at least a century. Lighting fire in the tile stove, the tea kettle, frugal breakfast, walk around Paltinis, reading, translation, writing, minimal lunch, the last touches among guests, and evening, finally, collecting the honey of this day, as he liked to say, gathering the fruits of the day, with other visitors. In parting, however, total surprise. Noica said to me, so, in a venture, that does not believe that will live more than three hundred fifty-six days (if I get good memory) − something less than a year, like next year, during this, I made it a quick calculation. I remained dumbfounded. I did not think (and therefore neither can I ensure that I hold exactly the number of days that he estimated, I almost deleted this number automatically from memory). I left with broken hearts. I could not believe Noica could be so precise in estimating the rest of the days which have left him to live. It could juggle. Even a hunch, I thought, could only be very approximate. Is a way to play with Goethe, I encourage myself.
The following year, 1987, I did not get to go on Noica at Păltiniş than later on in late August, before I go to Balcauti. Was in any case bad weather and unusually cold. The next morning Noica invited me to do Păltiniş tour together, but asked me to talk more than him, because it was too cold and fere not cool. It was just a soup and sticky. Noica wrapped the neckcloth twice, until the nose. We started to go down, to the hermitage, as usual. I would not be able to say what talking about. Not seen for almost a year. Had already passed my first year of internship at Balcauti. I had plenty to tell. I only tried to not go into too much detail, nor life, nor philosophical, just to cause him not to talk. However, after we gave around the ranger cabin, even on the last part of the circuit, Noica began to speak. I was worried, I was ready to stop him and remember its original request, when, suddenly, he said: I have an idea and I do not know whom to give. After a short pause, he added: It is this distinction: infinity outside – infinity inside. Further explained to me that this dichotomy is supporting the existence of two broad human categories, happy nature and unhappy nature. In the category of happy nature came, he said, people who possess the infinite inside their soul, who, in other words, can see the whole of things at a glance and can travel, free and unconditionate, in the infinity of spirit − they were after him, especially, philosophers, and oscillate about artists and theologians. Unhappy nature were those for which the infinite living outside, and this caregorie came, almost without any discrimination, scientists, i.e. those who are working with finite, trying to reconstruct what they always escape through fingers: infinity.
I followed all this exposure to extreme stress. I felt guilty because I made the Noica to speak and could not stop him. He spoke with such passion that seemed ready to take over again on a new path in philosophy. One step sparingly, but not without risk to fall ill, Noica, it seems, found right there the right moment and favorable context to transfer me his latest idea, like a race relay or heritage. Why me? Of course, by accident. Maybe Noica has passed this idea and others, to spread it everywhere can at that time. We’ll find out later. In any case, at the same meeting Noica would surprise me again with that fateful forecast. Gave no longer lived than the one hundred nine days. This time I was struck by lightning that. It takes sense. Forecast made last year, the idea this morning, the end of which recently brought remember uncle Pata.
I then left Păltiniş defeated and helpless. Although I do not still believe, I seriously thought that this might be our last meeting, however, that I saw now Noica alive for the last time. According to his calculation had to leave somewhere in the holiday season, before the holidays, the eve of birth who came to save us.
He did. Even in this successful. That could provide its own end with at least one year before, to leave everything in good order and not remain denied work, is without any doubt, a final victory in front of his destiny. And if it is indeed something beyond death, a life form, then certainly that Noica unbind now an idea, on the infinite spiral of philosophical thought.
*
That last idea of Noica remained hidden ins in my memory until, after almost 11 years, studying the problem of pure reason’s antinomy, put by Kant in Critic of Pure Reason, I realized that the distinction (infinity in – infinity out) throws a rescue light on the interior mechanism of these four cosmological antinomy. Kant surprise there how the deductive series of finity or infinity of the world continued indefinitely, sometimes outside, sometimes inside the concept of the world as intelligible totality.
Here, for example, first antinomy, that the balance is in the quality of the world to be bounded or unbounded in space and time:
If departing from the assumption that the world has no beginning in time, that means to the present world, every now and here, have passed an infinity of its previous state. But, says Kant, an infinite number of states can never be exhausted. Consequently, if the world would not have had a beginning in time, she might never get to its present state. Or, since it is given, it means that the world had ever started.
Conversely, if departing from the assumption that the world has a beginning in time, means that it is a moment earlier appearance of the world that there was nothing. But, says Kant, the world can not be born of nothing, any state of the world must result from another of her previous condition. Behind any given state of the world open at once an infinite number of previous states. Consequently, the world can only be infinite in time.
In other words, the world, as current infinity, is undermined by an infinity of its previous state, which lurk behind the world and cause it to close itself, to withdraw on the assumption that it is finite. Infinity of previous states of the world appears at the top, outside the world, and ends inside it – in a finite world, limited in space and time. Conversely, assuming that the world is finite, i.e. there is an “outside” of it (or an earlier time, vacuum), infinity of previous states of the world reveal in the present world and ends outside it, throwing into the air initial finity of the world in an infinite expanse in space and time.
I have extensively reviewed this antinomy game in the paper “Antinomy of pure reason and logical paradoxis” presented in 1998 at West University of Timisoara, on the occasion of International Symposium “Logic and Ontology” (an excerpt from this work was published in collective volume “Logic and Ontology”, Editura Trei, 1999, cared for by teachers Grecu Constantin and Iancu Lucica). The same relationship (infinity in – infinity out) is captured in the relationship between “euclidean geometry” (with infinite out) and “noneuclidean geometry” (infinity in) and in many other onto-logical situations, in my latest: Critical Introduction, Publishing Crates, Resita, 2004.
*
But back to humans, such as Noica done, in the spirit of a kinf of “metaphysical pragmatism”, original, kantian nature, because any metaphysical approach which does not find an answer in the nature of man and things is a waste in vain.
Pure reason antinomy speaks about the man, in the end, not the world. Overcoming of metaphysics should not occur in a step back into things and our subjective interests, like Wittgenstein, that by reason relativization (by withdrawing power of reason to talk about everything and establishing an elective axiology, in a completely secularized statistical universe, but with a step forward, to things, in which, through idea, to be found there, in small (in particular), what did you see that is true in large (in general).
Ideal of knowledge and wisdom is to see how the idea is pulsating like a heart, in people and things, and as ancient Greeks, to get to treat them with deep respect, as every man and everything would live a god (Beings).
Will be extremely interesting to show sometime that this message is in its substance deeply Christian and deeply ecumenical, and that in this sense, metaphysics reaches the end to a metapragmatică, ie description of the conditions of good neighborliness of man with God, with things around and with the society that has been given to live.
*
Our romanian message in universal culture seems to have finally found a barely intelligible speech late twentieth century. It could be this: re-spiritualization of Universe with ideas and concepts of metaphysics, the only way that can overcome the barriers between religions without impede none, leaving possible, in parallel with the progress of science, as many other styles of our relationship with God.
This was the objective which it sought Mircea Eliade, in his journey across the vast world of ideas and religious beliefs, in which he was not only remove to surface universal mechanisms of faith and religious profile of human, that the early history until today, pave the way of a hipertheological communication.
Had the same goal and Blaga, who has admirable summary his whole metaphysical program in those two memorable lyrics: “I do not crush the wonders of the world, / but with my light, increase the mystery.”
If you take a look in the past, with almost five hundred years ago, we find the same message set out in Petru Rares and his cousin, Metropolitan Bishop Grigore Rosca, in their vast iconographic program built in Bucovina Monasteries that were raised, with much theological courage, above their normal place of worship, to the rank of a truly ecumenical and theological treaty, integrated iconographic, architectural, conceptual and liturgical, as shown recently Sorin Dumitrescu in his book Chivotele lui Petru Rareş şi modelul lor ceresc (Ark Church of Petru Rares and their heavenly model).
Paradoxically, Cioran has worked in the same project. Cioran, “skeptical man on duty, of a world in decline”, not only made up nihilistic discourse resources for at least a century now. Giving voice to our intellectual skepticism, immanent, with complete sincerity, with all risks, including that of being cast in his own hellish tortures, Cioran not do than up, on our behalf, all the arguments of the defamers of good sense, of faith and spirit. Obviously, he lived as a pariah, the margins of society, proposing even to begin to live like a parasite in the cracks of this world, free from any determination or dependency and any professional relationship with the contemporary. Steep and winding, the path chosen by Cioran was, ultimately, that of the demonstration by reduction to absurdity: − If, after me, he would, after all I write, this world will believe in something, it means that is indeed something that can and deserve to believe. But few understood and were willing to suffer through this almost heroic, I would say, to test the foundations of our being and existence. Cioran himself, who has lived his life in absolute freedom horizon, i.e. the need to issue any predetermination and delusions, did not understand until very late, in the sunset of his life, what happens to him, which is in fact his destiny, i.e. just to consume, for others, the arguments of nihilism (as observed in an interview, Gabriel Liiceanu). He demolished a divine fury almost everything. One thing has not managed to undermine and ridicule ever: his aspiration for freedom.
Here the Brancusi, who all his life did not simply separate matter to ideas, the idea of a child to the idea of beginning, the idea of a bird to the idea of flight, the idea of woman to the idea of fertility, the idea of a pole of heaven to the idea of infinity, the idea of “the lord’s supper” to the idea of silence and commemoration of the past together. Brancusi actually not carved, but he incarnate ideas, he did revive and to vibrate in meat of stone, of bronze or wood. Brancusi is a philosopher who expressed in stone, which he remembered and spoke the language of our Neolithic ancestors, without doctrinal delusions, but with a natural vocation to a coherent system of ideas, centered around the same original message: re-spiritualization of Universe with ideas and concepts of metaphysics as a supreme form of spiritual integration of the infinity of the world, as well and absolute Being − the one that always transcends us, as they transcend every time his own creations and marvel.
*
I looked recently in Journal of ideas[v] see if that last idea to have a history. I found a lot.
One of his last record, [359][vi] since 1987, sounds like that: “I found that mathematicians are happy (too many people), physicists happy – chemists are unhappy (they were out of happiness sheet of Mendeleev and inhabits all over the world with their organic chemistry), biologists are happy – historians are unhappy (too many people, again), philosophers happy, musicians unhappy, artists happy, mystics unhappy, theologians happy.”
Here’s a scrap, [8][vii], 1958: “You only have to have courage and modesty summarize you to those facts which accumulation is possible. Each of them is given a single streak of Unfinished, only one form of infinity: not covet another’s infinity, do not steal their sacred Delirium. Lives, deepens and lost you in yours.”
Later in the scrap [320][viii] from the’65-’69 says: “Once you go from finity, another time you install directly into infinity. The difference would be that at the bad infinity, infinity which does not end, infinity is at the end, while, at the good infinity, infinity is in the middle of things, is everywhere … ” – a reflection that I would connect another reflection of De dignitate Europae: “Therefore in our world everything is good has a sense of never-ending − as all that is bad falling under the unfinished, this time for stupid, of something else and something else. For all that is evil is in a limited which repeats itself as a sad limitation, while what is good enter − as in any other culture − in the limit not limited (limit which does not limit anything), as the legend of the child born in the manger.”[ix]
Finally, here’s a scrap, [41][x], in the period 1968-1977, dated even with some rigorousness:
“Sibiu in May 1975.
If you do things with clean hearts, everyone come to help. So it happens now, when I see once again that nothing is good unless it has infinity, God’s part. Any place or ham dreamed sometime would be “good” if it were only like the dream. I came here (at Păltiniş, transl. n.) as in a determined anywhere, and little by little, day by day, others came to give it new determinations and change this nowhere into a somewhere, with respect, of my life, like in a transhumance doomed to return or to go into the place where it could repose, at last, in the sense [dreamed 40 years ago] (deleted, n. ed.), in its fruitfulness and its mildly extinction.”
*
The thought leads me involuntarily to Cezara (Eminescu’s narrative), to the old monk Euthanasius and his paradise island, to which all strive to end all our disappointments.
(16 June 2002, revised and added in November 2005, translated using Google on 2 June 2009 by Marcel Chelba)
[i] Suceava is a historic city in northern Romania, in Bukovina region.
[ii] Balacauti is the village where I was on probation through ministerial division, three years as professor of physics. It is located 4 km from the town of Siret and the northern border of Romania with Ukraine.
[iii] I wanted to withdraw from the Faculty of Physics of Timisoara and try to get at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj.
[iv] De dignitate Europae, of Constantin Noica, appeared posthumously in 1988, the Publishing Kriterion, in German (as translated by G. Scherg). In 1993 the book appeared in Humanitas Publishing House, finally, the original version, entitled The European cultural model. The book actually contains a series of articles published by Noica during 1986-1987, so in the final year of his life, in three different magazines: Ramuri, România literară şi Viaţa românească. Only put together these essays will reveal their true central theme, and their full “explosive” potential. Noica there definitely opt for a united Europe, supportive, even in decline. Because Europe knows how to revive, because it is precisely its purpose, to deny systematic any form of a spirit still, always becoming something else, like her destiny would be very newness. And for this european reviriment, Noica concluded there, we do not have to have patience with time, i.e. to expect the next kairós, auspicious, for a new rebirth of spirit.
Such serenity and regeneration power from a man crushed by history, in a country that rave in agony, as today, at the edge of Europe!
[v] C. Noica, Jurnal de idei (Journal of ideas), Ed. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1991
[vi] Op. Cit., p. 391
[vii] Op. Cit., p. 18
[viii] Op. Cit., p. 137
[ix] C. Noica, Modelul cultural european (European cultural model), Ed. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1993, p. 82
[x] C. Noica, Jurnal de idei (Journal of ideas), p. 235
