My youth had to have some meaning outside of books. I needed to start maturing, to prepare my soul for the revelations that would soon bestow life upon me. And this new life would take place only inside me, without anyone suspecting a thing. Soon, all my supervision and fostering of my inner life would release into my mind and soul a flood, whose source no one would be able to comprehend.
After a winter that had begun violently and ended in darkness, I knew and felt a single truth: that I would live two lives, one hidden, the other in full light.
The subterranean life would dominate, and when put to the test, in times of crisis, I would know which to choose.
FIVE: THE PROFESSOR
After the holidays, philosophy lectures were less well attended. I met students who did not understand a thing the professor said, whether in lectures or to them personally. They had assumed philosophy was a discipline that began, like any other, with an exposition of the fundamentals: atoms, chemical processes, basic theories. But at the university, philosophy was neither a science, nor a methodology, but a conglomerate of courses. And for every course there was a professor who lectured on whatever was of interest to him.
None of these students really understood what philosophy was. In seminars, they had learned that it covered a wide range of varied and interesting topics. In History of Philosophy, they had discovered fascinating things about the pre-Socratics. But in Logic, nothing; because the professor spoke too clearly and too convincingly, after a few lessons the audience had lost the thread of the course and the professor had found five others.
Those students who had enrolled for Philosophy without prior studies or experience found themselves disoriented and missed lectures, preferring to attend the History of Modern Romanian Literature, where the professor was witty and the class was always in high spirits. In the Literature Faculty there was a custom that no student could go into journalism without engaging in vulgar polemics with the Professor of Romanian Literature and Literary Aesthetics or fawning over him in seminars. The professor was middle-aged, plump, myopic and kind. His speech was irresistible, slightly rambling, with excusable grammatical mistakes. He lived only for literature, and as such, an institute and academic discipline had been entrusted to him, thanks to the kindness of the government and student donations. But he did not have any real followers. In reality, the plight of the professor was tragic and somewhat pitiful; he was admired and respected only by those students who had books to print but too little courage to look for their own publisher. Or students who aspired to departmental chairs, conferences, academic posts, or literary scholarships. The professor had a strange and perverse naiveté. He understood practically nothing, he spoke and wrote in such a way that nobody might understand him, and yet he was thought of as the country’s only real critic of aesthetics, and regarded as a genius, because he was mocked, was good, was kind, and smiled.
Seemingly innocuous, he nonetheless contributed year after year to lies and the suspension of literary common sense. He fanatically – perhaps regretfully – persecuted all those who opposed him or his system of aesthetics. The few who had the courage to stand up to him, suffered the consequences for years: this or that publishing house would be forever barred to them; various obscure journals insulted or ignored them; and at the University they would encounter mistrust and animosity. The Professor of Literary Aesthetics was both feared and ridiculed. He was despotic and rejected doctoral theses that failed to make reference to his system. No other man in the country was the target of such furious abuse, but he took no offense. His ripostes were pitiful, his attempts at polemic met with little success. He was the most celebrated professor at the University, with the largest and most distinguished lecture hall. Students from every year and from every college attended his lectures.
His voice was irresistible. Only the young women were incapable of understanding why the maestro was persecuted. They listened to him, and since they could not understand him, they concluded that he must be profound. The girls had read his nebulous, interminable course, which only increased their respect for him, since they were unable to learn it by heart. These young women listened in delight to the verbal attacks launched by the young men, but disagreed with them, unless the speaker happened to be dark and handsome.
Then there were the French Literature and Philology lectures. These were attended mainly by sentimental couples: girls who worked at the Academy Library, and boys with a romantic or nationalist bent. The students of French Literature were overwhelmingly female. Fragrances and rustling gowns descended on the lecture hall, the same as in a salon. The couples seated themselves at the back, by the windows.
Art History lectures were given in a cosy auditorium, where the professor used a riding crop to point at the works of art projected onto the walls. In the dark, the lecture hall was like a body breathing passionately, but warily. Fashionably modern couples attended: girls who scorned sentimentalism, and young men who knew how to take advantage of the bits the girls did not scorn. They sat next to each other, with briefcases and furs on their knees. Gritting their teeth, they all repeated the same move, which they had discovered in some novel then en vogue. In time, inhibition faded. Each knew that his or her neighbour was equally distracted, and many an all too genuine gasp failed to shock anyone. When the lights came back on, they would be revealed, blushing, flustered, overheated.
Rumours of the particular advantages of the Art History course spread astonishingly far and wide. Consequently, as we left the lecture hall, we would meet students from the Polytechnic and girls from Pharmacology. A law student friend always attended with a beautiful, impish girl, who had not yet finished school. The few demure girls in class sought refuge in the front rows or seated themselves on folding chairs along the walls. The boys arrived ready for action.
The professors knew what went on in the lecture hall. But the Art History course could only be taught in the dark. And thus, the vice was as inoffensive as the practice was universal.
In philosophy seminars one short, blond, articulate, well-dressed third-year student always spoke. The students at the back nicknamed him Ghița, while those in the front called him La Fontaine, and girls referred to him as Gigi, because he was charming and bold.
He would stand up and begin:
‘To highlight from a strictly pedagogical and rigorously scholastic standpoint contingently relative to time, place and persons’ – here he smiled – ‘and to attempt to subsume those elements directly fecundated by the formal exercise of methods that do not rule out an interest in the gnoseological, accessible via a new structuration.’
Nobody ever understood what Ghița was trying to say. The professors meekly put up with him. None of his classmates dared challenge him. If challenged, he would respond promptly and obscurely:
‘Kantian ideation and rationalisation though recurrence …’
He was always in search of original ways of putting things. Even when paying a compliment he would employ dozens of epithets.
‘You display accessible flair in your ethical symptoms, or rather in your neurologico-spiritual manifestations, or in the equation of your inevitable capitulations …’
One evening a student came to class who was just as short, erudite, and well-dressed. He was known as the Galvanometer or Little Kant. He spoke with the voice of an adolescent and pounded his fists on his bench.
‘You’re a subversive!’ he accused Ghița.
‘You’re dicotyledonous!’
‘Who, me?’
‘You’re amphibiously metaphysical!’
‘Place that definition on the plane of coherency and obvious logic.’
‘I do not accept methodological advice in the form of personal dialectical rejoinders.’
‘You’re impertinent.’
‘Peripherally corrosive.’
The professor, dumbfounded, intervened.
‘Gentlemen, please!’
‘Please