Offshore

The Secret of Dr. Honigberger - Mircea Eliade

2011-07-04T22:50:00.000+03:00

Imola's Other Translations

''What was scaring me more in this discovery of mine – that I was awake whiles asleep – was the feeling that the world next/ around me was completely changing, and that it no longer resembled, in any way, that of the daily consciousness. It is very hard for me to depict the way that I was feeling/ perceiving this change, because my mind I had projected as a whole, like one fascicle/ bundle only on the fire, and my senses were asleep. Yet, it was as if I were in a different space where there was no need top watch in order to see, and I was seeing the room I was in, the objects, the shapes, the colours, gradually changing. All that happened then is above all explanation; however, I shall attempt to describe it as well as I can/ do my best to describe it, as no one, as far as I know, ever dared to reveal through writing such an experience. I was ceaselessly watching the fire, not as a pretext for hypnotic trance, as I had long enough studied hypnotism to know its technique and effects. Whiles watching, thinking over the fire, I was assimilating it, entering with my mind my own body, identifying all its types of combustion within. Therefore, it was no jammed thinking, only a thinking that was one, to put it otherwise, it was not broken down into more than one direction, it was not demanded by more than one object, it was distracted by no outside stimulus ore by no piece of recollection projected as an éclat from the subconscious.

This thinking, unique, had in fire only its prop; still, with this thinking I would enter anywhere I had to identify fire. Thus, hypnosis was completely out ruled; moreover, since I was incessantly lucid; I knew who I was, why I was in such a position, why I was making my breathing be rhythmic, what was the purpose of my meditating on fire.

And, all these considered, I would realize, at the same time, that I was in some other space, in some other world. I could no longer feel my head; only the uncertain warmth of my head, warmth which, in time, disappeared as well. Thing looked as if they were continuously flowing, nonetheless without their profile altering too much. At first, one could have said that you were seeing everything as if through a stream of water in continuous movement, yet the comparison was anything but accurate. Things were actually flowing: some slower, some very fast. Still, one could not say where they were flowing towards, and by what miraculous process their substance never ran dry due to such overflow beyond their natural casing. Although, to try to give a more precise account on my vision, it was not a brimming over the casing of the object, rather it was its covering that was spilling over endlessly.''

Midsummer Night / The Forbidden Forest - Mircea Eliade

2011-07-04T22:47:00.000+03:00

Imola's Other Translations

''Part I

He opened the door as slowly as he could and turned on the light. The room was warm; it smelled like dust; The shades on the windows were lowered. Aside the bed there was a large wooden table burdened with books, almost all of which were new, some leaves uncut yet. On the other wall leaned a flimsy bookcase, as if made by an amateur, it too filled with books.

-What would you like to become? he heard the voice of the woman in the neighbouring room. Would you like to become an M.P.?...

”He is with Arethia”, he said to himself and headed, tiptoe, towards the bed. Since Spiridon Vădasţra had moved next door, he would enter nervously in his hotel room. Almost every night Vădastra had visitors. The walls were made of framework/half-timber and conversations could be fully overheard. In a few weeks, he had found out much about Vădastra. He had found out that he had recently obtained his Ph.D in Law and that he was director of a newspaper, The Student’s Momentum, which was being subsidized by The Police District Attorney. He found out that his associate and the administrator/ manager of the newspaper, a “nobody” called Voinea, had run away to Iaşi with the entire subsidy for the fallowing issue: 50 000 lei. He had known about Miss Arethia previously; he had caught a glance at them both a few times. Spiridon Vădastra was a meagre young man, black monocle, thorny hair and arrogant walk, of a man sure of himself; he was exactly as Ştefan had imagined him whiles listening to him. Arethia seemed ageless: she was lean, had colourless hair, cheek bones pronouncedly make-up and thin lips. When she smiled, she would close her eyes out of coquetry. Each time Ştefan met her on the stairs, he would catch her pulling down her blouse so as to contour her meagre chest.

-Who?! Me?! Vădastra raised his voice. Anyone can become an M.P. Even a man like Voinea can become an M.P…

-Then, secretary of state?! Arethia snapped.

MIRCEA ELIADE 6

- Maybe, Spiridon answered after a short wavering. Yet, what does it mean to be secretary of state?! One is here today, in the graveyard tomorrow. Later you go to the opposition and who knows when your turn will come again…Yes, it is good to be secretary of state, he added. I might become one…Yet, at any rate, what matters if one is secretary of state when there are so many other things?!...

- What other things?!

-Great things! Spiridon exclaimed, strange exclamation in voice. Things that cannot be done by anyone. To discover the North Pole, for instance! Had it not been discovered yet, I would have set out on an expedition, alone, and after years of struggle, I would have discovered it!...This, indeed! All newspapers would have written about me, all kings would have invited me at their courts; I would have become member of academies all round the world! And many more!

“His regrets are getting the best of him” Stefan had understood listening to the elongated silence from next door. It was just as it had been that evening when he had told about his defeat in high school: he told how the curtain was lowered unexpectedly whiles he was playing the Sonata Pathétique on the National Theatre stage because the History teacher’s conference had lasted for too long and the programme needed be reduced by half an hour.

“But why should they reduce precisely my performance?! Vădastra had cried out. Why did I have to be precisely the one whose performance had to be reduced, I who was a prize winning student and a “somebody”?!...I had wanted to make them a surprise. Nobody knew that I had taken up playing the piano. Only Mrs. Zissu knew, as I would practice at her place, for three, four hours a day and I would pay her fifteen lei an hour. Yet all were envious of me. It did not suit them that I had learned this also: to play the piano. I was the best at Writing and Latin, and now I had even learned to play the piano!...”

That night, Ştefan was still to find out that Vădastra had a glass eye and was missing two of his fingers on his right hand. It was only few days ago that he had mentioned the accident: the son of a colonel had shot him by mistake whiles playing with a rifle. Back then, the colonel had given him a large amount of money. Even since he was in hospital, Vădastra had decided on the way he was going to avenge himself: he was going to take up playing the piano, to show the others the little he cared about “the accident”. For a man like him, there were no such things as obstacles. It was then, whiles searching for a piano to rent by the hour, that he had met Mrs. Zissu…

-Fine, but what can you do from this point on?! Arethia finally asked him.

-What?! What can I do?! If one truly wants something, if one wants it with all ones might, one succeeds. And there is no need to stay in

Romania

. What matters

Romania

?! It is a small country. However, fancy being in America and accomplishing something great! Something no one had done before, something only you can do! Just imagine, to discover something like Radium, something a thousand times more important than Radium!...I would become the most famous man in the world, and the strongest, and the richest, all at once. What would someone like Edison mean when compared to me?!

7 MIDSUMMER NIGHT

-All would tremble at the sound of my name! I could do as I pleased with the entire world; change even kings, if I wanted.

-…It’s a pity it has already been discovered, Arethia whispered after a pause. Radium, I mean; it’s a pity that it has already been discovered, she repeated with somewhat more courage.

-What does that have to do with it?! Spiridon exclaimed. How many more things can there still be discovered/ There are many more things to be discovered yet! And, besides this, how many more great things are there left to be done?! But, not just like that, a whatever invention, as others do. Something extraordinary, something unique, something that everyone would talk about. To discover, for instance, a new continent or something else! Look, for example, to discover a substance by means of which all one touches would turn into gold!...

-It cannot be! This is the story of that king who…You know what I mean…,yet it cannot be.

-But why should it not be possible?! Spiridon answered more stirred up. Chemistry can do anything. It is a matter of atoms. All one has to do is to change the number of the atoms. And, one day, someone will discover it as many other have been discovered…But what is this to me?! It would have been beautiful should I have discovered it!...A substance that turns to gold all it touches. For instance, I now touch this chair and it would turn to gold! Do you realize what this would mean?! I would become master of the world! I could buy anything, all palaces, all museums. I would buy the Louvre and bring it into my home! And many more! All would tremor at the thought of I! I would pass by on the street and, should it seem to me that someone did not salut me with sufficient respect, I would call a sergeant and order him to arrest him immediately! What could anyone do to me? Should I want, I could even hill him! Yet I would not kill anyone. I am only telling you this for you to see what power I would have and how everyone would fear me. They would know, then, how to treat me. They would know who Spiridon Vădastra is. It would be enough for someone to speak my name so that all turn their heads. When I would enter some place or another, a restaurant, I mean, all would rise to their feet...and many more...

Silence was set once more, abruptly. Only a night moth awoke all of a sudden and began spinning round the light bulb. Whiles searching for a piano to rent by the hour, it was that he had met Mrs. Zissu. Vădastra should have been 15-16 years old back then; Mrs Zissu may have been his first love. He would always talk about her, but he had never described her, he had not alluded to her age, he had not even said wether she was beautiful. He realized that his door was being knocked at, but he did not answer. “It is a mistake, he said to himself; the light on the corridor might have burnt and someone must have mistaken the number of the room.”

-It seems that someone is knocking on the door, he heard Arethia say.

-The knocking is not here, Vădastra said. It is next door…the knocking was heard once more, more powerful.

-Come in, Ştefan shouted.

MIRCEA ELIADE 8

I was the door attendant. He rested in the doorway, politely, almost absent, looking nowhere, and handed in a pair of gloves.

-The chauffeur brought them just now. He said that they belong to the lady you were with and that he had returned from the Brătianu statue to bring them. I gave him a hundred lei…Ştefan took the gloves and stared at them, concentrated, frowning.

-Why will you not open the window? The door attendant spoke again. You will get sick. It is very warm here, in your room…

-What lady? Ştefan asked. Yet that instant he remembered and brightened up.

-Oh, yes, I know, he said. Wait…he sought in his wallet and handed him a bill.

-Might you give me a book to read as well, the door attendant said after having thanked him whiles carefully folding the bill. Ştefan had set towards the wall bookcase and randomly glanced at the shelves.

-But is he even sure that the gloves are hers? he suddenly asked.

-He said that he had returned from the statue of the Brătianu to bring them. He said that they belong to the lady you were with…I would like a beautiful novel, he added in lowered voice, smiling.

After the door attendant left, book under arm, infinite care, almost fright, Ştefan remained in the centre of the room, listening. There were no more voices coming from the neighbouring room. He came near the window and opened it wide. A smell of freshly watered garden came to great him.

“I still have time left, he said to himself leaning on the window. It is not midnight yet…”

…The girl had shrouded her shoulders and smiled. In the moonlight, her cheek seemed even more burnt by the sun and her hair had gained a dim shine, like that of old metal.

-I do not understand you, she said. I cannot tell wether you are joking or you truly believe…

Stealthily, above them, the sky had diminished its brightness. A star rises, lonely, on crown of the woods.

-All types of miracles could occur, he continued without looking at her. Nevertheless, someone must teach you how to look on them so as to know that they are miracles. Otherwise, you will not even see them. You pass them by and do not know that they are miracles. You do not see them…

-I am sorry that I cannot fallow you, she spoke eventually. I would have liked to understand you…

-Some say that this night, at midnight exactly, the skies open up. I do not understand how they could open up, but that is what it is said: that on Midsummer Night the skies open up.

9 MIDSUMMER NIGHT

-Yet, it may be that they open up only for whom has knowledge on how to watch them…

-I do not understand anything, she said. I do not understand…

He flinched and emotionally broke away from the window. The gloves were still on the bed, as he had left them. He brought them near her nostrils. It seems as if they were not hers, he said to himself, bemused. It seems not to be her perfume…

When he had kindled his lighter to light his cigarette, he noticed that her eyes were not green, as he had thought them to be; they seemed so because her cheek was sunburnt, but the colour of her eyes was more of a light green, gold embedded. Her too red mouth and her too white teeth, shining, unveiled by the shyest smile, would light up her face even more.

-I have been listening to you speak all evening long, Ileana began distractedly playing with the lighter, and I do not understand why are you prolonging this joke. Why did you not tell me that you are a writer and that your name is Ciru Partenie?...

He looked at her confusedly, forcing himself to answer her smile with the same smile.

-I could not tell you this because I am no writer and my name is Ştefan Viziru. To be exact: Ştefan I. Viziru, as my father’s name was Ioan...

Short gesture, Ileana bent her forehead. That moment, Stefan remembered, all of a sudden, effortless, what he had been stiffing to remember all those past days: where had he seen before that strange hair colour, which was neither black, nor blue, nor silvery? Now he knew: it was the colour of a rare species of pansy, which he had admired, enchanted, when, as a child, his family had just arrived in the Capital, and he was first taken to Cişmigiu Park. This discovery brightened him up.

-I have only been in Bucharest for a few months now, Ileana spoke again. I know almost no one. And I have read nothing signed by Ciru Partenie. I had barely heard anything about him. However, when I entered the restaurant, I saw someone eyeing you: “There’ Partenie, too, he said. I am surprised to see him coming around here. He may be having a date!...” And all evening long I noticed how so many curious eyes were seeking the sight of you. You were recognized, my dear master! It is useless to keep hiding!...

Ştefan settled himself with silently watching her.

-Are you really upset? Ilaena continued. I heard this when I was entering, near the door; it was beyond my will. And I felt quite intimidated during the entire evening…

-I assure you that I am not Ciru Partenie, he calmly interrupted her, almost gravely. Look, if you need my offering you a proof...

He began searching both pockets at once. He found an envelope and handed it to her. Yet he swiftly took it back and handed her a passport.

-It also has a photograph, he said. It is the best proof of my identity...

She opened it and read the name aloud:

MIRCEA ELIADE 10

- Ştefan Viziru. Thirty-four years old? You do not look your age...

He had approached her without saying who he was or what his name was.

-Look, he began, pointing to the woods, there used to be ponds around these places.

She suddenly turned her head and shuddered to see him so close to her. She had not felt him drawing near. She had heard no footsteps fallowing her. He was a tall man, stoutly built, yet slender, almost tender, and the brightness of his smile had intimidated her.

-...instead of these woods, there used to be ponds. Here is where I used to come with the fellows when I was a child...

He was always talking. Talking about the ponds around Bucharest, about the trees he had seen being planted. He would mostly talk about his childhood.

-...in high school, I had a hedgehog I had grown friends with. When I would come to see him, he would sense me from afar and would come out to meat me half way...

He stopped and suddenly turned his head away. Then he brushed his hand through his hair and looked at her furtively, shy smile, bemused.

-It is curious, he added, but I cannot tell what it is. You have a strange accent, almost foreign...

-I grew up away from my home county and I learned Romanian later in my life. But I learned it on the estate, alongside peasants...

-I once read a book, he continued as if he had not been listening to her, a book about a youth who was searching for snakes and who was talking to them. I am certain that these things are possible. Yet someone must teach you...My hedgehog, for instance, would roll over in front of me, would hide away his spikes and would let me caress him on his stomach. I am sure that I could have learned much from him, but I did not know how to talk to him...

The sun had set. A smell of freshly harvested hay had started to reach all the way to them.

-If you want to, we could stay here for a little while, he said to her.

Both sat down on the grass, face towards the woods.

-I am sorry for this, he started talking, late, but I have to ask you something...

He stopped for a moment, muddled, and looked at her. He felt his looks going beyond her, further away, without seeing her.

-You probably have no car. You might have come all the way to Jianu highway by tram or by bus.

She started laughing.

-By bus, she said. Should have I come by car?

-I suspected this, he whispered. I suspected you have no car...

He had risen to his knees, in the grass, and had drawn near her. He no longer seemed that young, yet he seemed more handsome this way; his straight brow, pale and smooth, bare temples, his large mouth, calm, contrasting with the heat of his looks and the clear shine of his teeth.[...]''

The Lustration Law in Post-communist Romania. Where the Idea Came from. What it achieved

2011-06-26T23:40:00.000+03:00

Defined as social and political cleansing, lustration aims at eliminating members of the former Communist political police (Securitatea) from any public office. Thus, according to the intent spread out in all former Communist countries after the 1989 revolutions, no one who had been involved with the secret police, either as member or informer, was allowed to participate in the justice or political system (these were the main fields, yet others were taken into consideration, as, say, the University). The problem, however, is whether this is even remotely possible. In order to see just which are the chances of such a project to be truly, and not simply apparently, set into motion, in Romania, we shall look into what the process itself involved, the various stages of the Lustration Law,from its prime idea as early as 1989 until the year 2010.

To begin, we must bear in mind Gabriel Liiceeanu’s „Aple către lichele“ (Liiceanu 1-2) We shall use this text as one standing for all of similar origin and function of the time. And from it, we shall see what was the attitude of the Romanian intelligentsia after December 1989, what was the purpose of their discourses, the aim of their rhetoric, and, of course, the possible (or impossible) outcome.

Therefore, Liiceanu’s December 30^th 1989 text advices those who know to have been part of the Communist regime, part of the Securitate, to withdraw from the public sphere for a while, to let the blood spilt in the Revolution drain, dry, and only then, with unbearable shame, dare look up, bearing their stigmata. Do so, and you shall be loved is the message sent to those fallen in disgrace. In other words, time shall bring forgetting and, with it, forgiving. We may easily assign more than one meaning to these words: as a promise of salvation in the long run, or as a social freeing on the short term. If obeyed, it would have managed to enact lustration itself, a lustration born of morality (minima moralia), and not imposed by law, even if only for a limited period of time. As such, it would have eliminated naturally those who no longer deserved to be part of the leading class, disregarding their function or domain of activity. In fact, the quilt ones would have acted as their own fair judges, would have seen their crimes and self-imposed punishment. However, this would imply to admit to oneself one’s guilt, to have the lucidity, the honesty, and the morality to claim one’s shortcomings and culpability.

Thus, society would no longer be fenced by the old regime, yet free to develop genuinely, while the accountable ones would patiently await their forgiveness. In keeping their distance, they would expiate their blame, they would purge their sins. Or at least this seems to be Liiceanu’s message. One thing to be take into consideration here is the immense number of the intellectuals who, after the Revolution (as much as it was one, shortly turned into a coup d’état, and also a imagined and directed revolution – see Barbu, 1997, 64-75), openly admitted to be anticommunist, turning the opposition to Communism into a fashionable and compulsory attitude (Barbu, 2004 108). However, it is only through confession that this can be achieved, for a mistake admitted is half forgotten whereas nowadays anticommunists tend to seek out the eliminating of the very memory of the past (Barbu, 2004 111), and not the remembering, as if to move forward is only to leave the past behind.

Thought of as social and moral purging, lustration aims at building a new political and economic order by eliminating the old one, considered perilous – as seen by Dragoș Petrescu, in „Dilemas of Transitional Justice in Post-1989 Romania“ (Dvorakova, Milardovic 127). Once Communism ended, it was mandatory to change the very roots of Romanian society so as to prevent the past from returning, to give the country a chance at a fresh start, one not smudged by the old regime. In a way, this was what Liiceanu was suggesting, that the old leaders be set aside and new ones be allowed to surface, some who had not been part and supporters of the old doctrine. After a totalitarian regime, drastic measures needed to be taken to ensure a genuine democratic system. One of these measures had to be the eliminating from the social structures of those highly involved with the old rule, the political police, the Securitatea.

However, we find that, years after the Revolution, the lustration has remained a mere project, a chimera meant to enchant and give a false sense of security and liberty. And its effects and possibility to better the evolution of the Romanian society at this point can be easily contested. It might just come too late to bring any difference. [1] The deed is done.

As such, the idea of a Lustration Law began to actually take shape as late as 2005, and even then, on a small scale. Meant to commemorate the dead and propose a moral attitude towards the horrors of the old government, the lustration is still struggling to be turned to reality. The lustrati are only a handful on politicians, generals, etc, out of which many appealed and most were acquitted. As recently as march-august 2010, the condemning of the Communist regime is still to take shape. Sixteen years after the Timișoara Proclamation, Communism is still allowed. On March 11^th 1990, a formal version of Liiceanu’s „Apel către lichele“ had been written down in the form of the Timișoara proclamation. The greatest issue on the Proclamation’s agenda, and the one considered to be unacceptable, though never admitted as such, was the infamous 8^th order of business: the lustration of public institutions of former Communist militants, in an attempt to achieve a moral cleansing. Yet, it was only on December the 18^th 2006 that Romanian’s President officially condemned Communism.

If the 187/1999 Law was never truly put to use, the 2006 Lustration Law was confronted with numerous obstacles as well. It was only in March 2010 that it was first accepted, and even then, shortly after, declared as unconstitutional. The flaw of this later law, besides the fact it comes too late (it was meant to take effect immediately, and keep party members from ruling the country still, yet now many have already retired - It also seems to carefully select those who should be threatened, and those who should be kept afloat, masterfully carving out along precise lines to mould guilt and punishment) was that, unlike its predecessor, it aimed at punishing collective guilt, not simply sanctioning individual responsibility. (Dvorakova, Milardovic 148). However, what Romania chooses to obnubilate, was that lustration, as limitation of individual freedom, is constitutional when in the general best interest. A marvellous example, in this case, is that of Check Republic, where the lustration process not only began shortly after the Revolution, yet it was, and is up to this day, one of the most drastic, imposing that anyone born before 1971, prior to applying for any public office, is to be investigated.

On a moral level, when discussing the implementation of the lustration law, we must keep present the possibility that the guilty be pardoned. Is it possible to love those who have wronged to such an extent? Can Liiceanu’s promise of forgiveness be believed and accomplished? Was is truthful, or mere words cast in the wind? Or is it that, like Oedipus, they have no forgiveness and no punishment is enough? As we have mentioned when first discussing „Apel către lichele,“ forgiveness looks as if possible. That is, the message might be interpreted as: stay low for a while and we shall love you once again. The same can be said about the lustration. The Law forbade those found guilty to candidate for office for three mandates. After that, the imprisonment, understood as a form of restriction of an individual’s freedom is over, they are free to carry on with their lives. How can this be seen as unconstitutional when the same happens in the case of common convicts who have their liberty restricted, confined? In the one case, the guilty is confined outside candidature and office, in the other, outside society. And all because the general wellbeing of society surpasses personal good. Besides, a crime is punishable through law: how can it be unconstitutional? From this perspective, the Nurnberg process was as horrible (or even the more) as the Holocaust itself! And this is the same view that makes the Lustration Law unconstitutional. And to think that, unlike the Nurnberg process, the lustration process condemns no one, neither to incarceration, nor to death.

Eventually, the obsession is, as is in the case of any horror, that the events never be forgotten, that the memory prevails, so as to prevent it from happening once more, history from repeating itself: „information opposes disorder, communication is the remedy for the entropy that brings torment into the world [...] modern communication ideologies prosper on this historical background, invoking memory (evidently forgotten by today’s actors) of the secret that stood at the origin of the shoah and the necessity to never let silence cover the world. [...] In this context, the sin is to communicate poorly; even the more condemnable, impossible to be forgiven even, is to be quiet“ (le Breton 14-15).

Interestingly enough, in 2010, the issue of condemning Communism, as was Nazism, is still unresolved. One argument, at one point, was a statistical one: 10 million people were killed world wide in the name of Nazism, and it had been banned; in comparison, 100 million died on account of Communism, and yet there exists a great level of hesitation in banning it. „What is, yet, the use of these somewhat cynical calculations, when an elementary moral tells us that it would not take millions of victims for a political regime to discredit itself permanently. Eventually – and in the order of discourse, not political responsibility – it shall never be possible for the counting of the victims shall to be precise and, in the end, it is relevant only for the place that these numbers occupy in the Post-Communist imagination. It is not as much the number of those eliminated and persecuted that may qualify a political regime, yet the repressive processes. […] The death of a single innocent should trial conscience with as much force as the extermination of thousands of innocent people“ (Barbu, 2004 98). Following the mathematical consideration, there should about ten times as many reasons to reject Communism. Therefore, why the hesitation? Why is Communism still not on the back list, and why is the lustration process still inefficient? Could it be that the disgraced (lichelele) think themselves forgiven?

And yet, in some cases, lustration seems to take from the rich, and give to the poor, to take the advantages of the old privileged, and give them to the victims. What it does, is to reverse the wheel, and maintain the initial discrimination. And here we may see the similarities with the positive discrimination process imposes by political correctness in an attempt to right the wrongs of the past. However, what it fails to understand is that in so doing it only perpetuates the social fragmentation that first led to hatred and discrimination, instead of helping integrate minorities and achieve social unity. Another attitude was to be found, for instance, in Hungary, where those in guilt could be pardoned and allowed to maintain their function on condition that they openly accept the past. In a way, the idea was present in Romania under the name of self-lustration. The principles behind it are two: on the one hand, an error admitted as such is half forgiven and, on the other hand, since the public is informed about a person’s past, it can taken decision starting from there. Indirectly, this would also help preserve the memory of the past regime, of its downfalls and abuses.

One could just say, in the light of Liiceanu’s text, that what was being asked from the former Communist supporters was to willingly lower themselves in a limbo, and there await their revival, the chance that the newly freed Romanian society would undoubtedly offer them to re-emerge and be loved.

There are two issues to be taken in consideration, though: the matter of guilt and that of the possibility of forgiveness. On the one hand „can one claim that, when freedom is missing the denial to participate in the rites of serfdom, the responsibility for one’s own acts and the solidarity with the victims of repression are also, necessarily, absent?“ (Barbu, 2004 109). In a different context, Jaspers sees quilt in accepting the merging with the crowd, in losing one’s individuality and sense of responsibility in the mob. And yet, he mentions, one can only be morally forced to act against the general flow if, and only if, the result would be favourable, and not mere self-mutilation (Jaspers 64-65). In the end, when authority seems to be coming out of the barrel of a gun (Arendt 141), to revolt seems hardly at hand, and hardly wise. Eventually, „the graves quilt, the one that cannot be annulled by no transition, was not the collaborationism – outspoken or confidential – of a number of people, yet the state of moral immigration in which, for five decades, the greatest part of the Romanian society hid. [...] After December ’89, it seemed that the entire society had just returned from exile, voided of its memory, without heroes and scoundrels, without victims and guilt. Unlike the Germans and Italians after the war [...], the Romanians – like other East-Europeans for that matter – seem to be the bearers of no collective trauma. I have only done my duty.“ (Barbu, 1997 66). The problem of guilt, duty and blind obedience surfaces in the case of Romanian Communism as it did in the case of the Holocaust. In both cases, the torturer could claim that duty prevailed above all, above family, friendship, morality. From an outsider’s view, this can be easily challenged, yet studies have shown it possible. It is no longer see as an anomaly for an individual to obey orders when the responsibility is taken over by a superior. Such an experiment was held in the U.S.A. by Philip Zimbardo, who later published the results in his work, The Lucifer Effect. Understanding How Good People Turn Bad.[2]

The second would be whether forgiveness is truly possible. What is preferable, to let the dust settle, the past rest in peace, or stir it up, dig it out, punish the guilty? Some voices see the latter attitude as unacceptable, and, let it be said, immoral.

Nonetheless, the issue of lustration remains. We have seen in the case of the Check Republic how drastic, and how prompt it can be. And we have seen in the case of Romania how late it becomes reality. Truth be said, given the current state of affairs, time needs still to pass before the lustration process takes effect. As long as this law shall be brought to trial and declared unconstitutional, whiles in a number of countries even tougher versions function, and while even the European Court for Human Rights found it that it was in the state’s right to limit individual freedom, in any form, if in the best interest of the state and its citizens, the Lustration Law will be a mere joke.

Bibliography

Hannah Arendt. Crizele republicii. București: Humanitas, 1999

Daniel Barbu. Șapte teme de politică românească. București: Antet, 1997

Daniel Barbu. Republica absentă. București : Nemira, 2004

David le Breton. Despre tăcere. București: All, 2001

Karl Jaspers. The Question of German Guilt. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000

Vladimira Dvorakova, Andelko Milardovic [eds.]. Lustration and Consolidation of Democracy and the Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe. Zagreb: Political Sciece Research Center, 2007

Gabriel Liiceanu. Apel către lichele. București: Humanitas, 1996

Philip Zimbardo. The Lucifer Effect. Understanding How Good People Turn Bad. New York: Random House, 2007

Brochure

Ne împăcăm cu comunismul? Legea lustrației în dezbatere publică. Institutul de investigare a crimelor comunismului, 2007

Articles (in Romanian)

http://www.ziare.com/ccr/stiri-ccr/senatorii-juristi-au-dat-raport-negativ-legii-lustratiei-1042122

www.sojust.ro/uploaded/sojust%20lustratie.doc

15 Aprilie 2005, Observatorul cultural, http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-arhiva-1232065-posibila-lustratie.htm

Lavinia Stan, „Modele de lustrație“ 8 September 2006, Revista 22, http://www.revista22.ro/modele-de-lustratie-3036.html

Victor Babiuc, „Ne trebuie o lege a lustrației?“ 12 July 2007, Jurnalul, http://www.jurnalul.ro/stiri/politica/ne-trebuie-o-lege-a-lustratiei-print-97021.html.

Anca Simina, „Lustraţie la picior de lemn: nimeni nu se simte în pericol“ 30 Aprilie 2010, Evenimentul Zilei, http://www.evz.ro/detalii/stiri/lustratie-la-picior-de-lemn-nimeni-nu-se-simte-in-pericol-893637.html

Andreea Nicolae, Elena Vijulie, „Cine se opune Legii Lustraţiei?“ 30 Aprilie 2010, România Liberă, http://www.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/politica/cine-se-opune-legii-lustratiei-185045.html

Dan Alexe, „Despre lustrație, avem oare dreptul să uităm?“ 27 May 2010, România Liberă, http://www.romanialibera.ro/opinii/comentarii/despre-lustratie-sau-avem-oare-dreptul-sa-uitam-187855.html

Viorel Padima, „Dacă s-a interzis fascizmu’, de ce nu s-a interzice și comunismu’?“ 14 July 2010, http://viorelpadina.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/daca-s-a-interzis-fascizmu-de-ce-nu-s-ar-interzice-si-comunizmu-idea/

[1] Victor Babiuc, „Ne trebuie o lege a lustrației?“ http://www.jurnalul.ro/stiri/politica/ne-trebuie-o-lege-a-lustratiei-print-97021.html.

[2] Philip Zimbardo. The Lucifer Effect. Understanding How Good People Turn Bad. New York: Random House, 2007. See especially pp. 269-272, 284-285, 299-300, where he presents the statistics, both predicted and real.

If You Seek for El Dorado

2011-06-25T13:07:00.000+03:00

[Imola: if you seek the impossible, do so until the end of time, let nothing stop, not even the awareness of your own death, and of the futility of your search - for all you know, you might just find what you are in search for...call it a means to illusion yourself for nothing, to lie to yourself so as not to give up, or the key to success...it makes little difference]

Edgar Allan Poe's El Dorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant night
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of El Dorado.

But he grew old --
This knight so bold --
And -- o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like El Dorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow --
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be --
This land of El Dorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied --
"If you seek for El Dorado."

Silence

2011-05-20T19:34:00.000+03:00

[Imola's Lines]

Since there is no meaning to words,

Since words equal void,

Can there be any words for thoughts

If thoughts are not void?

Assuming words might mean,

Thought may be words,

Were ears be deaf

Would there be any words?

Were ears able to hear,

And words to express,

And were thoughts not void

Would there be any words of mutes?

The Ear hears, the Mouth speaks,

The Words mean, Thought is –

Or so we proudly assume and claim –

Yet there is no mind to grasp them.

Can there be any words for Thought?

Urban Readings or Book Clubs

2011-05-15T10:00:00.002+03:00

There is a new way to claim that you are reading: you form a harem on a social site and all, as if lead by the nose, like an army aligning for battle, set out to read. Let is be serious about it, has not the pathetic nature of our actions reached ineluctable peaks already? Could there be any need for more? Do we truly need to gather ourselves up on the streets, in the park, in some cottage and read? Read? Evidently, those who shepherd the sheep do gain a drop of image and publicity, as they lead away obedient toy soldiers. First of all, someone who truly reads needs not to be hold by the hand in order to read, needs not to be set on the tracks, to be prepared and initiated in any way, to be set in attack positions.

All packs attack out of weakness, not out of strength and shiver, a perfect reader never reads under two half-wits uselessly beating about the bush, lost between two sheets of paper. Culture is not born on the streets, even if it does, yet not moulded, stimulated, yet on its own strength, naturally, from the simple fact of being is accordance with the wish of wanting to learn something. This is how the principle should be cultivated, the two cent rule of clean culture. Culture is not represented by masses, people brought and set into positions, puppies drooling with indolence; the herd can only amplify and monumentalize - as Gustave le Bon wisely said - stupidity and a rush after the bombastic.

The original here.

On Being Always Right

2011-05-07T18:49:00.000+03:00

[Imola's Quotes]

The way of a fool is always right in his own eyes! (Ter Ellingson)

Promisses

2011-04-22T10:32:00.012+03:00

In the cradle of lies you shall find my promise, your promise, our promise as well. I do not believe in promises, and this is not because I might be distrustful of people, as one might say at first sight, but because man distrusts even himself, what he shall do the following day, or the day after. Thus, let us come back down to earth, to our real world, cold and beautiful, if we want to go beyond illusion. If someone does not know what they want, if they have no chance of knowing themselves, why would I trust their uncertainty, why would I start from the premiss that everything is settled, why would I let myself carried away by the wave of a pocket of air? Promises are made to be broken, for it could be no other way. Promises do not help you, they set you on a road led by someone else, by some-other who might lead you by the nose, tempt you with sugar or with salt. Why will we not make our own promises, to find a plan and a solution in the space of our causality? Why do we chase after what lets itself most easily hunted down? Commodity is good, sweet, yet it is also hollow. It gives short lived miracles, and long term damage. Let us not be humble any more, try to break ourself completely from precarious constructs, and if we do, let us try to see that everything has an end, including our beloved life full of promises.

The original post here.

You Get What You Deserve and Nothing More

2011-04-15T22:49:00.000+03:00

Any tear meant to fade away is destined for monster-faced people. Strong men, those who have wide shoulders and firm fists, those who indicate time by the mere tip of a pencil, are prisoners of their own elasticity, of their supreme potency to place everything against them. They can do so much, and yet so little. In potency, Aristotelian speaking, any individual goes beyond their fault. In fact, any individual only oils himself with a dead potency. There is no land and afterglow to be trodden on, no matter how much we might like to believe there is. We are small, even if we are great, we have needs and and disputes, and we even (ful)fill with significance any smear greedy for an answer. Yet we cannot move mountains out of their roots, we cannot erupt like a vengeance seeking volcano. We have a limit stabbed in our chest, in the bundle of bones that break and scream within us.

The original post here.

What Do Men Want from Women?

2011-04-08T22:42:00.000+03:00

Men want few things, and are usually satisfied by little. Let us blame it all on a lack of ingenuity. Let us say that their creativity is not that evolved. In theory, no one should look for something precise in someone else, to wander about after some mask that he himself has rapaciously drawn. Narcissus, as he came to the surface of the water, and could see his reflection, immediately fell in love with it, which, in the end, lead him to his death. But of course! If you seek in a person a particular chimera, all that you do is, like Narcissus, to dive in your own puddle of lies, to cut the very branch on which you are sited. Narcissus would run of all that would cross his path, nothing could touch him, nothing would suffice him, everything would precariously masturbate in his sharp eyes. He had never been ready to love the truth of our banal things. He was a mortal with a godlike face, and thought, he would procure for himself a world drawn in pencil and colours, gathered through thoughts and imagination, an abyssal and ideal world, one that could never come into being on earth. We do the same, as we fight against the projection of our thoughts, we get upset on the person next to us, we run away from him because he does not meet the heights of the standards that we have imposed, the peeks of our fixations with perfection, precisely because he is not ideal, torn from any possible mundane smudge, because he is rooted in this dying, ugly mundane, in the ideal-falsifying world, as Plato would say. Narcissus left us a flower. Maybe we should give ourselves a flower, tell ourselves that its smell comes from here exactly, yet that it could take you there also, beyond and broken from any mundane idea. Maybe we should set means aside and not look for anything else, take everything as it is, and thus drawn ourselves in the ship ripped from the ideal. Were we to understand that life is not the ideal copy of our thought, we would truly reach our needs; maybe in this manner we would write any human moment in blood, and not in ink.

The original post here.

The Task of a Translator

2011-02-28T01:11:00.000+02:00

Imola's

Benjamin’s essay aims at defining the task of the translator, what distinguishes a good translation, from a poor one. In doing so, he starts by discussing concepts like fidelity and freedom when attempting to render a literary text in a different language. In fact, he looks for a description of the translator’s duty, in relation to obligation and rights.

Actually, what makes a bad translation? Theories and theorists have claimed that a good translation should aim at retaining the meaning in detriment of syntax. Word by word translation has long been banned. Claims on the relation between the literary / poetic capability and the translation capability of an individual have shifted from one extreme to the other. Some consider that only a great poet shall find the means of trans-lating (as in mathematics, moving a given image at another location, at a 1:1 scale), others that a poet’s talent shall come in the way of fidelity. Which of these bears even the slightest shade of truth in it? To see just this, Benjamin starts his discussion from the very status of the work of art.

Stating that no work of art is meant for the receiver [„No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener“ (15)], he dismisses the older theory that the translator must bear in mind the characteristic of the public for his translation: „If the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?“ (16). Moreover, we generally (and lightly) regard as the essential substance of a literary work that which is „in addition to information, the unfathomable, the mysterious, the „poetic,“ something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet (my underlining)“ (15).

Basically leaving aside any prior claim, Benjamin states that, what is important in any translation is the possibility of the original to be translated – its translatability. And what could this consist of? A priori, a literary work has this potential, deeply embedded in its very fibber, and it is the task of the translator not only to see it, yet to understand it, along with its implications. In an attempt to explain this, Benjamin mentions the true language, a universal language, in fact, one that goes beyond language barriers, for it lies underneath language itself, as a lining, linking languages into kingship: „languages are interrelated in what they want to express“ (17).

To translate, thus, is to burrow all the way down to this hidden layer of significance, to conquer it, and bring it back to the surface of language, in yet another tongue. Thus, concepts like loyalty and freedom are brought about in a different light. One is free to stray from meaning, as long as the translation is made to mean the same as the original, as long as it brings about the same fragment of the true language; in other words, one is allowed (and obligated!) „to deviate from the letter of the text in order to render its spirit“ (25).

Walter Benjamin, „The Task of a Translator“, in The Translation Studies Reader, Lawrence Venuti [ed.], Routledge, London and New York, 2000.

Reminder: One Year Ago

2011-02-22T04:44:00.004+02:00

http://nevermore-offshore.blogspot.com/2010/02/wish.html

For those who remember the very first post, and for those who do not...

What is Disillusionment?

2011-02-15T21:54:00.000+02:00

There are people who know how to play with your heart and your fire; these puppeteers mix together the human with the thinnest layer of nothingness, the know how to make you cry even when your world is still unripe, humble, meant to win. They are the illustrious puppeteers, men of hidden times, that insist on bringing even the humblest lie in the space of your causality. They suffocate you as they know best, they adore you and they love with their perfid tear, and avid for pain. I can no longer win this fight against them, they are much too cunning, too fast, driven by my fury to kill with authenticity. It may be that in the madness with which I have armed myself, that is to say with the helmet filled with true illusions, I have come to actually support them, to offer them the torch with fire and oceans. Camus said that the absurd is to be found on the meeting ground of man and life, and the world, and the ocean of society. I say it is absurd to cry after tears, to want to love like a fool, like the last sinner run over by the greatest lie, by one of the greatest and most beautiful lie that there is. And, come to think of, what if it is absurd? Does it matter? Whether we try to unveil the world with metaphysical momentum, phenomenological or hermeneutical, whether we thirstily say that everything is absurd, it makes no difference, there is no point in deceiving ourselves with doctrines and epistemic illusions, it only makes sense to lie to ourselves, we anyway do so daily...

The original article here.

Love makes the same

2011-02-15T21:32:00.001+02:00

Imola's Quotes:

'Love makes the same': Love wants to spare the person to whom it dedicates itself every feeling of being other, and consequently it is full of dissimulation and pretence of similarity, it is constantly deceiving and feigning a sameness which in reality does not exist. And this happens so instinctively that women in love deny this dissimulation and continual tender deceit and boldly assert that love makes the same (that is to say, that it performs a miracle!). This process is simple when one party lets himself be loved and does not find it necessary to dissimulate but leaves that to the other, loving party; but there is no more confused or impenetrable spectacle than that which arises when both parties are passionately in love with one another and both consequently abandon themselves and want to be the same as one another: in the end neither knows what he is supposed to be imitating, what dissimulating, what pretending to be. The beautiful madness of this spectacle is too good for this world and too subtle for human eyes.

[Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, aphorism 532]

La femme nué – The Naked Woman

2011-02-11T02:06:00.001+02:00

Imola's Articles

The naked woman, in visual art, has come to attract greater interest starting with the Renaissance. La femme nué grew artistically both in painting and in sculpture, though some greater spreading may be noticed in the former than in the latter. My interest here is to look not into the entire history of the image of the unveiled woman, yet to select a contemporary representation of the female body, to analyse a photograph, to see what it shows, and what it hides, and how it can be interpreted. In my endeavour, I shall start from Peter Brook’s Body Work, continuing with a personal attempt at rendering an insight of the picture.

In Brooks view, based especially on psychologists such as Fred and Lacan, the body as such represents the other, that foreign, l’étranger, the unknown that needs to be both known and possessed. In his work, Brooks mentions the Cartesian dualism, the distinction made between the soul, which is considered to actually represent the self, and the body, as something distinct, I would add untamed. To my mind, Descartes, in the discrimination that he makes between the two sides of human existence, the spiritual and the material, actually feeds on a long tradition of religious belief, seeing the soul as being transcendental, as having access to a perfect world beyond the present one, and the body, as decaying and standing in the way of the soul towards purity and happiness.

In fact, the important thing in his considering of res extensa and res cogitans is precisely his claim that the former is mathematically determined, an instrument of the latter. And is it not so that the present looks upon the body? Ever since Epicurus, the body has been the element of pleasure and pain. In hedonistic philosophy, the body is that which brings man close to nature. This view shall later be taken up by Nietzsche, as he speaks of the need to give up ascetic ideals, those that make us turn our face from reality, eventually from life, and place ourselves in a mentally and artificially constructed unreality.

The female body as object of desire and knowledge eventually found its way into the nascent art of photography, after previously having been a favourite element of painting. Now, the naked body could be represented without mediators like the paint, the brushes, or the canvas. It would seem that photography would be more giving to sight of the naked body. It might be said, that the art of visual representation had itself been stripped of its garments. In the end, we are left with a naked means of putting forth the naked truth of the naked woman, the purpose of which to satisfy the (male) libido: libido amandi, libido dominandi, libido capienti (Brooks 11).

This having been said let us takes a look at the picture above. The nakedness of the photograph is, first of all, veiled by the blurred used as a photographic technique, in this showing that even an art originally thought of as bear may have its shields. Leaving this aside, yet keeping it in mind, what is given to our sight is a torso in an uncanny position to say the least. The head is bent back, thus hiding the face and, with it, the identity of the model, the lower body is hidden from sight by drawers put in the way of the camera. One thing that must be taken notice of is the fact that the drawers had been arranged there, they are misplaced, put there precisely with a signifying purpose. To interpret the arrangement, I would say that either the artist saw the woman as a hidden creature emerging from the drawers or, more likely, that a woman is formed of parts, as of a set of drawers, each a repository of part of herself. In fact, what we are presented with is a woman that can be known by opening one drawer at a time. And this is precisely what Charles Pinot Duclos meant when stating: ‘we seek to strip them [women] of everything the we think hides the Truth; and when we have satisfied our curiosity on one, we lose our illusions, and we run after another, to be happier. Love, pleasure, and inconsistency are perhaps only a consequence of the desire to know the truth.’ (Brooks 11-12).

Such being the case, how is the female body to be known and possessed (Brooks 11)? Being naked, it appears to already have being exposed to sight, to visual penetration. However, admitting sight as a path towards knowledge, and nakedness as rendering of truth, the photograph hides more than it shows. In fact, it displays just enough to excite enough to fully engage the imagination, without actually presenting reality as a whole. The photograph, in the very end, opens a drawer or two of the woman’s truth and nakedness, it hides and frustrates in as much as it reveals and satisfies. Eventually, the present photographs sets the problem not of the know-ability of women, yet of the un-know-ability. To put it simple, it seems to me that the photograph raises the following question: ‘What happens when a man is confronted with a woman that can never be stripped bear, in that she can never be fully known, forever changind, forever generating drawers to be opened?’

Works cited

Brooks, Peter, Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative, Harvard University Press, New York, 1993.

Why Do Women break up with Men?

2011-02-10T00:38:00.000+02:00

We keep on being tormented by the questions that hide something in themselves, we keep on trying to rack through the perfidy sinister of every thought in the hope that we might reach a satisfying answer, yet we forget that wounds are not thus closed, yet are even the more deepened in the unreached that we harass. The reasons for a break-up shall never exist, and this is because there are no real reasons, there are just some saturation points, some small up-risings that that decide to gather together in a last and supreme jump.

Men have never been inventive, they have always been preoccupied with hunting, to mark their territory, to gobble any pray voraciously, and stay in one place. Women, on the contrary, since they were forced to be chosen, they were forced to find artifices, to be more and more certain of their uncertainty, everything being just a trick, a smiling scarecrow aiming at attracting even the more potential chimps in their snares. Yet what can be deduced from here? What did women get out of this unlike men? Well, women, being forced to let themselves be preyed on, have also found the refinement, the technique, the tender, the lascivious, they have found the mesmerising webs of flirtation, they have learnt to choose, and thus to be refined. And this that which completely escapes men. Therefore, armed with a baggage of games and words, they began to select, to analyse even the more each potential partner, all being, in its very essence, just a game. Sexuality, dance, perversion, these have all grown into friends of women, and this was because the males would push things as best as they could, thus forcing things beyond any limit.

Evidently, the vicious circle arises, and a monkey gets the hint that it is time for a change, that he should learn the language of women, that is to play, to dance, just like them, to be cunning and look precisely where it hurts, that is to say in the conceit of the bundle of vulnerability. From here to afar there was only a step to go. Men began to filter their terrain, have raised the stakes, have began to measure their words, to be more tamed, to eventually make the transition from barbarian to civilized man. Yet, in their chase for the prey, men have raised the stakes for women's perception even higher when it came to their flirting techniques. To say things in a nicer manner, men danced their own dance, yet on the music played by women.

And now, let us return to what pains us, why do women break up with men? Following the above reasoning, it is rather clear why women choose to break up with men. In the market place, one keeps hearing that men are perverse, petty, changing, that they run after many things, after that which is desired, yet actually, one of the reasons for the break up lays precisely in this myth: perversion. Women are meant to be loved, not understood, I forget who once said - and this is so, for play is above all. A woman breaks up with a man when he forgets to be perverse, when he forgets to lie t her beautifully, even if he tries to. Women break up with men because the dance is unknown to men, because they no longer know to be as seductive as they've once been, that their road and their certainty that they have laid there hands on a piece is shredded precisely then. The woman feel and smells more than anyone else. She runs from you because you have grown comfortable, because you have forgotten to enchant her, and to illusion her as you once did. The woman runs from you because the evolution scale obligates her to do so. In this mad competition, only the most cunning wins, and not the honest one. There is no sincerity in a balance! Women break up with men because they no longer know how to make love, they find nothing new with which to surprise them, they are no longer a match for their own fight, of the game with which they have nurtured them from the very beginning, when the have seduced them and brought them in the space of their potency. Women run from men because men choose to cry after them, rather then run after them, to hold close the feeling of uncertainty, and not that of win.

The original article here.

How to Answer Any Question?

2011-01-31T19:37:00.001+02:00

Someone would ask me how it was to set on the wall such an amount of life bits and thoughts, to unveil in front of everyone, to show them the most intimate scribblings. to uncover yourself of your fears and sing with your own ash. What that person did not know was that my life, just like yours, or the one's next to you, is nothing more than a good joke, nothing is nailed down, stuck in your own virtues of destroying even the most fierce current sliding towards you: life is only a trick out of which only cheaters escape. Smile on their faces!

Suffering is not made for weak people, drained by all that they are, drained by all that they are, it is shed where there are no patterns, in the shell of the strong, in the running point of those with great intentions, where blizzards are born, and where spies are set, in the emptied abyss of the Gods!

The original post here.

Eros. A Metaphor for Understanding God or a Path towards Him?

2011-01-29T17:13:00.004+02:00

Imola's Article

‘Sexuality is the only gateway to heaven in all biology’ (Cioran)

God wants us in all things to have our contemplation and our delight in love. (Julian of Norwich)

In the present article, I intend to analyse the way in which eros, and the erotic, had been used to render as clearly and as easily comprehensible as possible the connection between the material world, and the spiritual world[i], whether it is of the body and soul, of man and God. My interest here is in the connection man may hope to achieve to God through love, and the way that love has been described by Julian of Norwich[ii].

Firstly, one must consider the meaning given to the term ‘love’. According to the Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology[iii], there are two types of love, one by which God reveals himself, agape, and one that men feel for their fellow men. In the end, the problem is whether one may ask the question: ‘[i]s charity—the love inspired by grace*—a transformation of natural love or does it require a total rupture with that love? To answer these questions we must know what love itself is’.[iv] This is precisely what Julian assumes, namely that natural love is but a form of love understood as that which brings union (whether it is between the divine and humanity, or between human beings). And to the question ‘what is love?’ Julian shall try to answer in her revelations, and present it as that which unites and brings together.

I shall now look into the ontology put forth by Julian, comparing it to that of previous thinkers debating this issue, namely Plotinus, and implicitly Plato, and Augustine, as potential sources of inspiration other than the Bible, including the Song of Songs[v]. In my proceedings, I shall also take into account primarily Gillian T. W. Ahlgren’s article, ‘Julian of Norwich’s Theology of Eros’[vi], and other authors secondarily.

To start, we must consider Julian’s view on creation and human ontology. To her, man and the world is the result of an overflow of divine love, created out of love. This comes rather in the line of Plotinus, who saw God as the One irradiating into all things (as the One overpouring into lower levels of creation, each time identical to itself, only in a lessen quantity, as the Sun would send its rays further into the Universe, always diminished and thus less perfect), into the Intellect, then into the Soul, and into the souls of things, and thus creating the world, one layer after another, each being endowed with a lesser amount of light, thus of perfection[vii]. From this view, one may assume that God, in his pouring of love, was anything but constant, thus resulting in a variation in the goodness of his creations. To go even more back in time, one should see the Platonic idea in Plotinus’ Neo-Platonism, namely that, in fact, the world, earthly, material, human, is nothing more than an imperfect reflection of the divine, or, as Plato would call it, of the world of ideas[viii]. This perspective on creation will later influence Augustine in affirming that, in fact, man represents a lack of goodness, a privation of divinity[ix], given by the mere fact that man was created out of an imperfect, pre-existent matter[x], unable to receive more goodness from God, man being evil in that he lacks in divine goodness. In the end, Julian places love at the centre of creation following the Christian tradition, yet she does so in a different understanding of love, namely she sees love as both eros and agape[xi], substituting Plotinus’ idea of light, and the Augustinian idea of goodness (and evil), with that of love[xii]. In the passage ‘AND after this I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in mine understanding,—by which sight I saw that He is in all things’ the relation between Julian’s vision of God, and that of Plotinus becomes even the more evident[xiii].

In Ahlgren’s acceptation, love, eros, is the driving force that brings man from isolation into communion with another[xiv], and it is precisely this idea that makes Julian consider love, in all its forms, as a pathway towards God[xv]. In the end, Julian’s idea, that love between humans is but another form of love that might lead towards that of God, is not original, as such. Saint Bernard de Clairvaust saw cupiditas, carnal love, as a first level of love, followed by three of love directed towards divinity. Yet, could it not be assumed that lacking this very first stratum, as a step on a ladder, one could not hope to achieve access to the upper ones[xvi]? In absence of cupiditas (as a form of love: agape, eros, philia and storge), could man aspire towards agape? It would seem that, as a child learns first to crawl, and only then to walk and run, man must first learn selfish love so as to understand that he can love not only the humanity that he sees in others, but also the divinity that God had placed in men, and eventually divinity itself, no longer needing it to be shown in human, more comprehensible, form[xvii]. To put it differently, since sexuality is a form a love, it necessarily is a part of the road to loving God or, as Julian would say, ‘as we learn to stretch ourselves erotically[xviii]—that is, to pour ourselves out, in love—toward others, we make more manifest the body of Christ in our own time and space (italics mine)’[xix]. Here Julian is clear about the similarity of God’s pouring himself out of love in man, and man’s pouring himself out of love in another human being, in what I would see an imitating act of the divine creation. Actually, similarly to the way that God filled man with love, man fills man with his love, earthly, imperfect, ephemeral as it might be, one merging with the other in a unity of love[xx]. And which could be the most profound way of union[xxi] accessible to man (at least to a man of the people) if not through eros?[xxii]

To Julian, God is a being of love, seen both as lover and beloved, and in this posture he appears along her writings, in fact drawing on the ambiguity of context in the New Testament, where many a times the phrase ‘love of God’ makes it uncertain whether it is God’s love for man or man’s love for God, or simply the love with which man is endowed, his possibility to feel love[xxiii], either for God or for man or for both. Thus, as Ahlgren notices, ‘the revelation of God’s love can and must be expressed in both erotic and agapic terms; anything less than the full union of all that both dimensions of love convey is less than God. By extension, the Christian community, as a whole and through each of its members, as it seeks to participate authentically in the body of Christ known throughout time and space, must strive for consistency between its expressions of charity and goodness (agape) and its expressions of connectivity, intimacy and embodied love (eros)’[xxiv].

On the other hand, there is always the possibility that Julian might have had in mind Origen’s idea that, in the case of God, love as agape, and love as eros can be seen one as the mirror reflection of the other, eventually, one and the same, the both of them being part of divine love, seen a s whole[xxv]: ‘Origen is quite insistent that, in God, grace (or agape) is interchangeable with God’s passionate love (or eros), he lays the foundation for later thinkers to conceptualize an eros that contributes to the greater good of the soul’[xxvi].

In Julian’s view, made out of love, man is thirsty for love, ‘the Spiritual Thirst of Christ: the love-longing that lasteth, and ever shall, till we see that sight on Doomsday. For we that shall be saved and shall be Christ’s joy and His bliss, some be yet here and some be to come, and so shall some be, unto that day. Therefore this is His thirst and love-longing, to have us altogether whole in Him, to His bliss,—as to my sight. For we be not now as fully whole in Him as we shall be then’[xxvii] (italics mine). As emanation of divine love, man is love-longing, aspiring to receive and offer love, as response to the initial act of divine love outpouring into the world, and creation. Eventually, man may come to the point when he may understand divine love, as both agape and eros, yet for that he must also understand[xxviii] that love which, though divine in the fact that it, like any other existing element is part of the divine creation, thus made of love, has a lesser degree of divinity[xxix], it being directed towards men, erotic love[xxx].

Eventually, Julian pulls together the two threads by which love had been previously understood, eros and agape, puts them together to form a concept of love that unites the love that man feels naturally, and that which he feels through exercise, the natural and the divine oriented love. What is remarkable about her endeavour is the attempt to reconcile two sides of the man, until then set apart, the erotic, material, ephemeral, and the divine, spiritual, eternal, the yearning and the desire (passions) of the body with those of the soul, both of which she sees as paths towards God.

Bibliography

Ahlgren, Gillian T. W., ‘Julian of Norwich’s Theology of Eros’, Spiritus, 5.1, 2005, 37-53

Lacoste, Jean-Yves (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology, Routledge, New York, 2005

Louth, Andrew, The origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition From Plato to Denys², Oxford University Press, New York, 2007

Osborme, Catherine, Eros Unveiled. Plato and the God of Love, Clarenton Press, Oxford, 2002

of Norwich, Julian, Revelations of Divine Love, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2002

[i] Cioran once said ''The sexual act overgrows, at any being, its biological significance. It is a triumph over animality. For sexuality is the only gateway towards heaven in all biology." Given the theological environment in which he had been brought un, one might assume that his affirmation is in some wa related to the mstical union of heaven and earth as is presented in biblical texts.

[ii] ‘her incarnational theology enables us to approach and appreciate eros as the foundational unitive principle—of God and humanity, of body and soul, and of human persons bound up in the mystical body of Christ’

[iii]Jean-Yves Lacoste (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology, Routledge, New York, 2005.

[iv] Lacoste, ibid. p. 947.

[v] While the Bibli distinguishes between tho types of love, and the Song of Songs uses the bride-bridegroom relation as mere metaphore to render more claerly the relation tha man may have with God, we shall see later on that Julian actually sees the man-woman relation as well as among fellow men as a means towards God.

[vi] Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, ‘Julian of Norwich’s Theology of Eros’, Spiritus, 5, 2005, 37-53.

[vii] Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, passim. For an insight on Plotinus’ theory, see also Andrew Louth, The origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition From Plato to Denys², Oxford University Press, New York, 2007, pp. 36-40. However, the similarities vetween Plotinus and Julian only go this far for, as Louth also notices, ’The One has no concern for the soul that seeks him; nor has the soul more than a passing concern for others engaged on the same quest: it has no companions. Solitariness, isolation; the implications of this undermine any possibility of a doctrine of grace — the One is unaware of those who seek it, and so cannot turn towards them — or any positive understanding of the co-inherence of man with man.’, ibidem, p. 50.

[viii] Cf. Plato, The Republic, passim.

[ix] Man as privatio boni.

[x] Cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions, passim.

[xi] And in this respect she goes againsts Origen who, following Plato, distinguishes between two types of love, one low, and unworthy, the other high and precious. Cf. Origen apud. Louth, ibidem, p. 65 ’It follows that, just as there is one love, known as carnal and also known as Cupid [i.e. Eros] by the poets, according to which the lover sows in the flesh; so also there is another, a spiritual love, by which the inner man who loves sows in the spirit’ (italics mine).

[xii] The importance in understanding where her theology is situated in the line of Christian thinkers shall help us form a backgroung againsts which her profile shall be contoured.

[xiii] See also Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2002, Chapter XI, p. 26.

[xiv] Cf. Ahlgren, op. cit., p. 37, ‘when I use the term eros I refer to the deeply human urge to form connections, to merge lives, to create and delight in beauty, to work together, to reach beyond oneself and dissolve boundaries of selfhood, to bind up wounds and restore life, to move from fragmentation toward wholeness, to generate and nurture new life. Eros is at the heart of all curiosity and desire, all creative activity, all commitments to sustain and enhance life, all attempts to share who we are with others, all community building, and, ultimately, any human evolution toward goodness.’

[xv] One should here bear in mind Origen’s view on the problem of agape and eros, namely that they refer to the same thing, there being no distinction in nuance whatsoever: ‘Origen goes on to discuss the words for love, agape and eros, and argues that there is no real difference between them, except that eros can be misunderstood (in a carnal way), and so Scripture, as a rule, uses agape as being safer.’, Louth, ibidem, p. 65.

[xvi] And was this not Plato’s view in the Symposion, that there are levels of love to be experienced and conquered?

[xvii] Cf. Louth, ibidem, p. 10, ‘Plato describes how love is subjected to the process of intellectual purification. It is a process of abstraction and simplification — abstraction both qualitative and quantitative. Thus, the soul is led from that which is perceived by the senses to that which is independent of the senses and perceived by the mind alone — a movement from the material to the spiritual. It is led, too, from concern for the many and various to what is single and unique. And yet it is still love. It is not love drained by abstraction and become indifferent, but a love intensified and deepened as the soul plunges into ‘the wide ocean of intellectual beauty’.

[xviii] Cf. Origen apud. Louth, ibidem, p. 57, ‘the Song of Songs. In this he [Solomon] instils into the soul the love of things divine and heavenly, using for this purpose the figure of the Bride and Bridegroom, and teaches us that communion with God must be attained by the paths of charity and love.’ Here, Origen clearly sees the matter of presenting the union between man and God as metaphor, whereas, in the case of Julian, it seems that the erotic layer of man is accepted as such, and the union thus presented is taken not only metaphorically, as was by her predecessors, yet also as such, when considering inter-human relations as means towards divinity.

[xix] Cf. Ahlgren, ibidem, pp. 37-38.

[xx] The problem here is in understanding what this unity may refer to, how it can be rendered. According to Louth, ‘The mystic is not content to know about God, he longs for union with God. ‘Union with God’ can mean different things, from literal identity, where the mystic loses all sense of himself and is absorbed into God, to the union that is experienced as the consummation of love, in which the lover and the beloved remain intensely aware both of themselves and of the other.’, ibidem, p. xiv.

[xxi] Eventually, far from being Christian, the idea that perfect connection can be achieved erotically actually goes as far back as Ancient Greece, where gods would be united with mortals, and where eros constituted a significant part in military life, the link between two warriors.

[xxii] Cf. Ahlgren, ibidem, p. 41, ‘Consideration of the many ways that we are graced, in and through our bodies, to make real the erotic love of God to one another should give us deep pause to consider whether or not our human interactions, particularly those in the most intimate spheres of our lives, are reflective of all that we have to come to know about the love of God […] embodying the very tenderness of God in all our loving actions’ (italics mine), also Origen apud. Ahlgren, p. 53, ‘So you must take whatever Scripture says about charity [agape] as if it had been said with reference to passionate love [eros], taking no note of the difference of terms; for the same meaning is conveyed by both. . . . So it makes no difference whether we speak of having a passion for God, or of loving Him; and I do not think one could be blamed if one called God passionate Love, just as John calls him Charity’.

[xxiii] Cf. Catherine Osborme, Eros Unveiled. Plato and the God of Love, Clarenton Press, Oxford, 2002, ’[at times] it remais wholly unclear whether God is the lover, the beloved, or neither’, p. 28.

[xxiv] Ahlgren, ibidem. p. 39.

[xxv] And, as all thing divine, love can, if fact, be only one, for it must be unlimited; thus, since the existence of two loves (types of love) would mean that one functions as limit to the other, these would no longer expand infinitely; losing their bounderlessness, they would also lose their divine nature. The idea also appears in Plotinus when he discussed God as one, and the impossibility of the One and the things to be distinct, from where he derives the explanation of the One irradiating into the Soul and the souls, thus maintaining its divine limitless. See also Julian, Revelations..., Ch. XXII, p. 48, ’Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending’.

[xxvi] See Ahlgren, ibidem, p. 40.

[xxvii] Julian, Revelations..., Ch. XXXI, p. 61.

[xxviii] An understanding by the means of what Pascal would later on call the logic of the heart, and not that of reason.

[xxix] As is the light in the souls of things in the Enneades.

[xxx] It is to be assumed that just like the secrets of the world, God shall make love easy to be grasped by men: ‘OUR Lord God shewed two manner of secret things. One is this great Secret [Counsel] with all the privy points that belong thereto: and these secret things He willeth we should know [as being, but as] hid until the time that He will clearly shew them to us. The other are the secret things that "I coude of this right nowte." He willeth to make open and known to us; for He would have us understand that it is His will that we should know them. They are secrets to us not only for that He willeth that they be secrets to us, but they are secrets to us for our blindness and our ignorance; and thereof He hath great ruth, and therefore He will Himself make them more open to us, whereby we may know Him and love Him and cleave to Him. For all that is speedful for us to learn and to know, full courteously will our Lord shew us: and [of] that is this [Shewing], with all the preaching and teaching of Holy Church.’ (Julian, Revelations..., Ch. XXXIV, p. 62)

How to Free Ourselves from Boredom?

2011-01-21T20:24:00.001+02:00

I have many a times pondered on the essence of life, especially since along this circus I have met numerous people who were intending to kill themselves because they did not know what was the essence of life or whether there is one. Actually, I lie, I only began to think seriously about it when the number of those who were going of kill themselves began to grow. In the end, life is nothing more, nothing less, than a game of dice. And when I say game I am thinking about the most simple and natural meaning of the word. Things are as such: we get bored, this is the stake of everything there is.

The mathematics of probability was not invented to discover the essence of the world we live in, but to establish a firm possibility to win the lottery. Life, as it is built, by us, of course, is nothing more than a running away from boredom. We are bored by everything and everyone. We get married out of boredom. We go shopping out of boredom. We have children out of boredom. We have jobs out of boredom. Camus speaks of the absurd, yet nothing is absurd, yet calculated with ant precision. In fact, everything is a fight fought against boredom., everything, absolutely everything. We love because we get bored. We lie to ourselves that we love, that we are romantics. We dance, we laugh forcedly we fulfil rituals, we invent religions (see Scientology or Joseph Smith, Jr.'s Mormonism), we sing music, we write poetry and philosophy, we sing in a chorus and spit seeds.

Let us be serious, nothing is absurd, Sisif himself become aware of this, yet Camus saw too little, he couldn't go beyond the first layer, he did not look into depth sharply. Sisif did not brace his faith, he did not marry it, he laught at laughter itself, he showed that everything is boredom, and fell into the causal chain of inertia precisely to open our eyes: we are small and we run after lollipops, we pretend to do science, and make rackets, when, in fact, we run from death, we hind behind spies, and we grin forcedly because, let it be said, we have nothing better to do. We are monkeys who got their hands on tools, and this because we got bored, we wished to be as brave as the lion or the tiger, we craved for flight and birds. It was not evolution that raised the stakes, yet boredom, the need to take yourself out of arms, from the softness with which we had stigmatized ourselves at birth, by the weakness with which we have endowed ourselves as soon as we have been thrown on earth.

The original post here.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2011-01-17T23:28:00.003+02:00

Imola's Quote

''It is completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; She did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor has she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anybody more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.''

Can you love like that?

See The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.

TheOffshoreMusic:

The Vanity of the Soul

2011-01-16T19:48:00.001+02:00

What beauty to sing as if writing! What beauty to write with musical notes, to melt them in the unreal within you, holding onto and aiming at always another, towards a hidden land that only shows its head for a brief moment through sound! The most beautiful men have composed music; there are no saints or philosophers, there is nothing with which the musical sublime can be compared, not even the illusion of silence torn from heaven.

The erotic is intertwined with the idyllic noumenal in the space of music, here lies the forbidden fruit, here it becomes possible, from here it rises up and shakes itself off of chimeras. Music is our key and answer in front of the lack of strength that we have been stigmatized with at birth. Music is the creator of meaning and oceans, it is the only once set on crossing the desert and the illusion of being. It unites the somatic, it cuts it and dissects it with roses and thorns of ice.

The original post here.

About Us

2011-01-07T11:51:00.001+02:00

You have merged completely. You have come to speak like me, to think like me, to listen to my music, to read my thoughts. You have come to wear my clothes, wash them, to pour yourself completely within me. You have grown to see with my eyes, to listen as I do, to become mad the way I do, not to want anything that is yours. You have come to believe in what I believe, this is how you have forgotten about yourself. You have thrown yourself completely into my world, you have drown in it, you have suffocated yourself with it, and now everything is difficult for you, you can no longer walk on your feet, you need me, you need me to hold yourself. Yet, what you do not understand, is that I cannot sleep with myself, I cannot listen to myself, I do not need to see myself in you. Like you, I need to pour myself in a place, in a garden to carry me the way that it carries you. This is my reason, this is the thing that is separating us, this is the thread that is killing our little idyll.

The original article here.

The Man Behind the Legend

2010-12-20T02:14:00.004+02:00

[Imola]

Who was the writer and the man hidden in the shadow of the dark figure of Edgar Allen Poe? Perceived by posterity as an alcoholic and addicted drug user, Poe is often considered as an immoral exception for the 19^th century. It is saddening to see how a man of genius can be discredited as a writer by pure speculation.

Contemporary critiques have categorised Poe's works as being of inferior literary value. Not even with the publishing of ''The Raven'' did the critiques give more credit to Poe's literary talent and, moreover, they used this poem as a weapon against the writer's previous works, as a means of proving the doubtful importance of Poe's creation. One probable reason for Poe's rejection was the desire for retribution of those whom he had roughly critiqued, as he had no reticence to making enemies if this meant being true to his own believes. Many speculate that his outrageous life style was the cause of Poe's early death; however, his doctor's records provide some poof that his constant drug use was a means of easing his unbearable migraines. Ironically, the drugs and alcohol used to diminish his pain would deteriorate even more his decaying health and state of mind*. Suffering from what was then known as brain fever and depression, he would try drugs and alcohol. Yet, it remains debatable whether he would indulge in such artificial stimulants or whether, a as it had been said, a glass was enough to make him loose notice of his actions due to his low tolerance to any stimulants.

To support this hypothesis, Poe's own words could be cited: "I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness, and a dread of some strange impending doom."

However, judging by today's public and clinical point of view on depression, one should not be surprised by the way Poe's state of spirit was looked upon. Even in this modern world being exceptional, apart from the crowd, independent from the general opinion, is the same as being immoral. Therefore, how can one expect Poe to have been well received by the 19^th century!?Eventually, could we not say that he was simply born in the wrong époque and had the misfortune of bad genes, strong personality – and the last is a capital sin – maybe a man of genius.To put it differently, given his psychosomatic sufferings, one could say that he had nothing to anchor him to reality…

*An illness rather similar to that of Boris Vian, both Vian and Poe having died of heart failure at the age of 39.

The Ten Commandments

2010-12-12T22:06:00.000+02:00

Try to hold on to everything you have. Try to tell yourself that nothing is truly important. That the only thing that might be importance is your own way to relate to things. The events are mere interpretations of our own moral. Moral would not exist were it not for the factual reproduction of a thought. Try to look at everyone and at everything, not to let yourself persuaded by anything and anyone. Try to be open, to speak with beggars, to shake hands with those who paint fences on the streets. Try to speak with the watchman, with the doorman, with the cleaning lady. Try to be proud of your achievements, there is no point in turning humble only so as to prevent some individual from knocking you over the head out of envy.And yet, do try to keep your feet on the ground, and not to dream too much. Filth is much closer to man than heaven is. Try to look in the mirror and ask of yourself only that which your subconscious demands from you.Try, strange as it may seem, to grow conscious of the unconscious. At any rate, it is precisely the unconscious that dictates for you. Try to cry, to let it all out, to listen to the wind or the rain. Dancing is no stranger, do try to let yourself stolen away by it. Try to take care of yourself, sickness goes above it all; it is only when you are in the precipice that you see yourself in truth. Try to want everything, yet not to kill in cold blood, yet with a smile and a word. Tr to go beyond words, beyond what is being said, to have snake ears and vulture eyes. Try to dance in the streets and in the rain.Try to be honest with what you feel every moment and not eternally. Live! Be in accordance with the soul that is calling you and putting you to sleep. Invent stories and go through life with them. Nothing is more beautiful that to become conscious of your tries or of your truth. Do not remain stuck in your own principles, these are made to be broken, violated by your very uncertainty. Be not the cold soldier with criminal thought, yet the man shooting down the murderous thought. Go beyond fix ideas, principles and traditional filth! Start with yourself, break the fence, push hard on the note,and make it discordant, it is at an rate hidden within you.

The original post here.

I Hate Winter

2010-12-05T03:18:00.000+02:00

Because I have lost my entire childhood or because I am the only child in the entire world who still believes in something pure. Because all believe that it is time to run into shops and buy all that you can find, including a swimming suit or a life jacket. Because, let this be our secret, we are so sinful, and yet hellishly pure. Because we run to and fro after fir trees and pigs, yet we forget to be honest with ourselves. Because we help out beggars only in hope to win the lottery. Because the cold literary puts me down, and my immune system is as poor as it can get. Because the snow no longer makes me shiver with happiness, yet only to shiver. Because I am sickened by holidays pumped up with trunks and sung by all in a chorus. This does not mean that I shall not dance like crazy! Because, to be honest, I do not think that we can change the paradigm in which we live, at most to mould it even the more on our own oceans. Because fir trees are green, and money is just as green. Because women cook until late into the night, until morning comes, only to receive a slap over the face. Because family has no sincere connection with the idea of family or with what it might be...Because we have little children who ride sledges on facebook, and not on the streets. Because Santa Clause does not exist, and with him, neither does our entire festive lie.

The original post here.